Our Approach
Structural advantage, deliberately built
Most managers allocate capital. Royal Oak controls the machinery around it — origination, underwriting, structuring, delivery and management — so that every position we take is de-risked by capability, not just by covenant.
The firm draws on the principal’s related businesses — Transact Capital in commercial real estate services (acquisition sourcing and advisory, sales, leasing and property management), Transact Finance in debt and capital advisory, and Transact Insurance in insurance broking and risk advisory. That ecosystem supplies proprietary origination, market intelligence, corporate finance capability and risk management that a standalone manager of our size could not otherwise command.
It also changes what we can see. Because we lend and invest across the whole capital spectrum, every opportunity is examined through two lenses at once: what it is worth as credit, and what it is worth as ownership. When the two disagree, that disagreement is usually where the opportunity — or the danger — lives.
Full Capital Stack
One platform, every point on the capital stack
We are not committed to a single product. We are committed to the right structure for the risk — anywhere from senior debt to ordinary equity.
Seeing both sides changes the underwriting. A credit position is priced by someone who has carried development risk personally; an equity position is sized by someone who knows precisely what the debt above it will and will not tolerate. The dual lens is not a slogan — it is the same people, applying both disciplines, to the same transaction.
- Senior Debt
- Stretch Senior
- Mezzanine Debt
- Convertible Notes
- Preferred Equity
- Ordinary Equity
Three Pillars
Where conviction becomes capital
Every Royal Oak vehicle sits within one of three pillars — each carrying the same disciplines of alignment and capital preservation.
Private credit
Senior, stretch-senior and mezzanine positions secured against real assets, originated through our own networks and underwritten with a developer’s understanding of what can go wrong — and what it costs to fix.
Structured equity
Preferred and structured equity positions that sit between debt and ownership — engineered to protect capital first, with a defined path to return and upside where the transaction earns it.
Direct property development
Direct development and value-add repositioning across our core sectors, where design, delivery and asset management are controlled inside the platform rather than contracted around it.
In the Principal’s Words
“Why don’t you just do it all yourself?”
It is the question I am asked most often — if the returns are real and I invest my own money first, why accept outside investors at all? There are three honest answers.
First, accountability sharpens performance.
Accepting outside investors makes me sharper and more accountable. Managing capital alongside partners I have invited imposes a discipline that investing alone never could.
Second, it lets me crystallise and recycle capital.
Anything I do purely in my own right tends to be held in perpetuity and never sold. A co-investment vehicle allows me to crystallise an investment at the right moment and recycle that capital into the next opportunity, rather than leaving it locked away.
Third, it creates diversity and reach.
By partnering, I can pursue more opportunities than my own balance sheet would allow — spreading capital across more transactions and building a broader set of return profiles and risk exposures than a single investor ever could.
Royal Oak is small by design. What looks like scale forgone is alignment kept.— Alex Gismondi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Vertical Integration
How integration de-risks
Capability held inside the platform at every stage of the investment lifecycle — this is what integration buys the investor.
Originate
Proprietary deal flow through the Transact ecosystem and two decades of relationships — most Royal Oak transactions are never marketed.
Underwrite
Corporate finance, valuation and risk analytics applied in-house. Every assumption is stress-tested through both a debt and an equity lens before capital moves.
Structure
The position in the capital stack is chosen to fit the risk — not the product on the shelf. Capital preservation dictates the structure; the structure is never retrofitted to the raise.
Deliver & manage
Design, construction, finance and asset management disciplines held inside the platform, de-risking execution through to realisation.