Americo Cascella
Americo Cascella is a founding partner of Pacific & Plains Capital, a Dallas-based alternative credit investment firm. He is a member of its three-person governing Executive Committee, and also serves on its Investment Committee and ESG Screening Committee both overseeing all of the firm’s investment activities, capital commitments, and investment strategy.
Mr. Cascella began his investment career in 1998 at Ares Management, a Los Angeles based alternative asset management firm where he worked for over nineteen years until his retirement as a partner in 2017. At Ares, he served as a portfolio manager and senior executive in its credit division specializing in below investment grade fixed income, and for thirteen years was a member of the firm's six-person Investment Committee governing capital commitments in high yield bonds and syndicated coporate loans.
Between 2004 and 2017, Mr. Cascella was responsible for investing and managing over $15 billion of his firm’s assets across multiple portfolios spanning the breadth of the firm's liquid fixed income strategies, including its flagship long-short credit hedge fund, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), separate client accounts and co-mingled funds investing in high yield bonds and syndicated corporate loans. During his tenure he also led the formation of a substantial portion of the firm's current credit platform by structuring and arranging the firm's initial fund offerings of CLOs, credit default swaps, benchmarked high yield bonds, benchmarked loans, and flexible credit strategies which combine multiple classes of debt instruments to deliver total return. In addition, Mr. Cascella was active in Ares corporate management, serving on its firmwide Risk Management Committee, its Marketing Committee, and as part of a successful initiative to design and implement a proprietary trade order management system tailored to the firm's wide variety of fixed income and equity holdings.
Between 1998 and 2004, Mr. Cascella was an investment research analyst for Ares, responsible for identifying, evaluating, and recommending investment opportunities in high yield bonds and syndicated corporate loans. During this time, he covered approximately two thirds of the industry spectrum, including broadcasting, cable, chemicals, financials, gaming and leisure, healthcare, manufacturing, media, retail, telecommunications, and transportation. In addition, Mr. Cascella spent substantial time restructuring and managing troubled debt positions within the portfolios, principally those of emerging telecommunication providers, movie theater operators, long term care facilities, and transportation companies.
Between 1994 and 1998, Mr. Cascella worked at the Los Angeles offices of Price Waterhouse LLP as a senior associate in its audit and business advisory services group. He engaged in treasury risk consulting, evaluating the effectiveness of global foreign exchange risk and interest rate risk management strategies and of transactions intended to diminish earnings volatility and stock price fluctuation for various clients. In addition, he was responsible for corporate audits, planning and supervising teams of two to six finance professionals conducting examinations of financial statements and economic condition of both SEC registrants and closely held companies.
Mr. Cascella is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with a Business Emphasis in June 1994.
