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Criteria and Evaluation

The Canyon Catalyst Fund identifies and evaluates emerging manager candidates that fit the following profile:

  • Developers, owners and operators with less than $1 billion assets under management
  • Up to three institutional commingled fund and/or separate account investments
  • Investments in urban markets throughout California, as well as the key western submarkets of Seattle, Portland, and Phoenix metro areas
  • Principals with a demonstrated track record
  • Expertise in specific property sectors

Emerging managers are evaluated across several categories, including their fund strategy, current deal pipeline and deal flow. The Canyon Catalyst Fund also considers the profiles of the management team and ownership structure in evaluating potential partners.

ADAM RIZKALLA

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, PORTFOLIO MANAGER

Mr. Rizkalla is a Senior Vice President within the Investment team at Canyon. Mr. Rizkalla joined Canyon in 2022 and primarily focuses on structured products including asset-backed securities, residential mortgage-backed securities, and commercial mortgage-backed securities. Prior to joining Canyon, Mr. Rizkalla worked at Thornburg Investment Management, where he invested in a variety of structured products. Previously, Mr. Rizkalla worked at J.P. Morgan as an investment banker in the Structured Products Group. Mr. Rizkalla is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University (B.A., Accounting). Mr. Rizkalla is a CFA® charter holder.

Sam Reid

Partner, Portfolio Manager

Mr. Reid is Head Debt Trader. Mr. Reid’s primary focus is to oversee trading activity in credit market investments. Prior to joining Canyon, Mr. Reid was a sell-side High Yield Credit trader at JPMorgan Chase for seven years, where he traded CDS and high yield bonds in both a market making and proprietary trading capacity. Mr. Reid is a graduate of Georgetown University (dual B.S., International Business and Finance). Mr. Reid is a CFA® charterholder.

Todd Lemkin

Partner, Portfolio Manager

Mr. Lemkin is the Chief Investment Officer of Canyon Partners, LLC. Mr. Lemkin directs and manages the efforts of Canyon Partners’ portfolio team to develop, analyze, and implement investment ideas across the firm’s global platform. Mr. Lemkin has extensive investment expertise across the cable, media, telecom, satellite, industrials, real estate, gaming and packaging sectors. Mr. Lemkin has also previously focused on Canyon’s European investment effort and the firm’s London office. Prior to joining Canyon in 2003, Mr. Lemkin was with Scoggin Capital Management in New York, where he focused on analyzing securities of distressed and bankrupt companies. Mr. Lemkin was also an Investment Banker in the Healthcare Group of Banc of America Securities and the Mergers & Acquisitions Group of Lehman Brothers. Mr. Lemkin is also a director and trustee of a number of nonprofit and charitable organizations. Mr. Lemkin is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (B.A., English).

Mitchell R. Julis

Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Mitchell R. Julis is Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Canyon Partners. Canyon Partners is a global value-oriented alternative asset management firm with offices in the US, UK, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. Founded in 1990 and Partner owned, Canyon employs a variety of event-driven and opportunistic strategies across a broad spectrum of asset classes. Canyon Partners’ flagship fund, the Canyon Value Realization Fund, twice received Institutional Investor’s “Credit-Focused Hedge Fund Manager of the Year” Award. Additionally, the Canyon Structured Asset Fund received Institutional Investor’s “Hybrid Hedge Fund of the Year” Award. Mr. Julis has also received Institutional Investor’s “Lifetime Achievement” Award.

Mr. Julis is a graduate of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), Harvard Law School (J.D., magna cum laude) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., honors). He received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University of New York in 2011. Prior to forming Canyon, Mr. Julis directed a group of professionals responsible for a portfolio of distressed and special situation securities at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Prior to working at Drexel, he was a bankruptcy and creditors’ rights attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York.

Mr. Julis serves as a Trustee of the Brown University Corporation and on the Board of Overseers at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He previously served on the Board of Trustees at Princeton University and is currently a member of the Advisory Council for the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the School of Public and International Affairs. In addition, he is a member of Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science Leadership Council. Furthermore, he sits on the Board of Trustees at the Asia Society, the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute Advisory Council and the Dean’s Advisory Board at Harvard Law School. Also noteworthy is his active role in establishing the Harvard Law School Program on Jewish and Israeli Law. In 2019, Mr. Julis received an Honorary Fellowship from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Mr. Julis and his wife, Joleen, reside in Dallas and have four children.

Joshua S. Friedman

Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Joshua S. Friedman is Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Canyon Partners. Canyon Partners is a global value-oriented alternative asset management firm with offices in the US, UK, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. Founded in 1990 and Partner owned, Canyon employs a variety of event-driven and opportunistic strategies across a broad spectrum of asset classes. Canyon’s flagship fund, the Canyon Value Realization Fund, twice received Institutional Investor’s “Credit-Focused Hedge Fund Manager of the Year” Award. Additionally, the Canyon Structured Asset Fund received Institutional Investor’s “Hybrid Hedge Fund of the Year” Award. Mr. Friedman has also received Institutional Investor’s “Lifetime Achievement” Award.

Mr. Friedman is a graduate of Harvard College (1976) (B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Physics), Oxford University (1978) (M.A., honors, Politics and Economics, Marshall Scholar), Harvard Business School (1980) (M.B.A., Baker Scholar) and Harvard Law School (1982) (J.D., Sears Prize, magna cum laude). Prior to forming Canyon, Mr. Friedman was Director of Capital Markets for High Yield and Private Placements at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Prior to working at Drexel, he worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Goldman Sachs in New York.

Mr. Friedman is a member of the George W. Bush Presidential Center Executive Advisory Council. Additionally, Mr. Friedman serves on the boards and/or the investment committees of a number of endowments and foundations including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Broad Foundation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In 2014, Mr. Friedman received Institutional Investor’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mr. Friedman is a former chair of the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees of Caltech (2013-2019). He also formerly served as a Trustee for the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2015-2020) and the J. Paul Getty Trust (2019-2021). Mr. Friedman also formerly served on the Board of Advisors of the UCLA Hospital Department of Neurosurgery (2009-2020); the UCLA Anderson School of Management (2017-2020); and the California Science Center (2010-2012).

Mr. Friedman and his wife, Beth, reside in Dallas and have three sons. Mr. and Mrs. Friedman are 2019 recipients of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

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