Bob Diamond and Elliott Lorenz Talk AI, Tokenization

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Carol** (0:07)
Well today and really just moments ago, Bob Diamond's Atlas Merchant Capital announcing a minority equity investment in Edge Focus. It's a firm that delivers technology capital and access to consumer credit. So we wanted to get the details right from the sources, the main sources. Bob Diamond is founding partner and CEO of Atlas Merchant Capital, global private equity and all-to-asset management firm focused on the financial services sector. He's also chairman of Hyperliquid Strategies. Welcome, welcome.

**Tim** (0:32)
My node thing or two about running a big bank too.

**Carol** (0:34)
Yes, I bet he has some stories. Also with us, Elliot Lorenz, he is co-founder and CEO of Edge Focus. They, as the company reminds us, delivers technology capital and access to consumer credit. Welcome, welcome to both of you. Thank you for bringing this to us.
I want to first get to the investment. Elliot, let's talk about this investment. What does this equity investment specifically do for you? It has to do with operations, doesn't it?

**Elliot Lorenz** (0:57)
It does. The important thing for us is being able to go more asset classes and really invest in the long side of our partners. What we do, as you mentioned, Carol, is provide capital as well as access, as well as several other things to the consumer lending market. What we're ultimately looking to do is to connect-

**Carol** (1:14)
A massive market, by the way.

**Elliot Lorenz** (1:15)
Huge market, $200 million in unsecured consumer last year. We're trying to connect, at the end of the day, big investment firms like a Fortress with really large consumer lending firms like a SoFi.

**Tim** (1:27)
Yeah, Bob, come on in on this investment. There's a lot of noise around credit markets, around private credit right now, in particular.
You have a very diverse portfolio at Atlas Merchant Capital. Why make this investment right now?

**Bob Diamond** (1:40)
We have seen a real unbelievable development in the credit market since 2008, the great financial crisis. And I think so much of credit ended up on bank balance sheets prior to 2008, particularly outside the US. You know, the big banks in France, the big banks in the UK, all the credit was on the bank balance sheets. And we have seen a real development. Some call it private credit.
You know, it's Edge Focus, it's Fortress. There's so much diversification. And I think that's why we have had such a long period without a real blip in credit. It's become, you know, it's a real credit to the US capital markets.
I think in some terms of consumer credit, and I saw this, you know, through the lens of Barclays, I saw it very much through Barclay Card, which dominated the credit card and consumer credit market in the UK, is again, it's much more diverse. It can be spread a lot. And I think we have originators of consumer credit like SoFi, in Edge Focus. We have capital that likes to invest in consumer credit like Fortress. And I think one of the things that we can do together is we can find more originators. We can find more investors.
And, you know, when we look for an investment, you know, you wanna have someone that has a unique position in their market, that's Edge Focus. You wanna find someone that has strong leadership, that's Elliot and the team. You wanna find a business that's profitable, but most importantly for us, you wanna find a business that has both a willingness and ability to grow. And this can be a significant increase over the next three, four, five years with access to capital to grow this business. So it's unusual in financial services to look at investments where they can be multiples of where they are today. But what Elliot and the team have built can be multiples of this. It's a big market.

**Carol** (3:43)
You mentioned unique focus that Elliot has and his team. What is that unique focus, Elliot? Because the consumer credit market, a lot of players, a lot of folks in there, what is it that you guys are doing differently? And I'm curious then, Bob, like what you think they're doing differently. That's appealing.

**Elliot Lorenz** (3:57)
We do three things really well. We have access to a ton of data, our modeling approach, and then access to various other consumer lenders. From a data standpoint, hundreds of billions of data points in the US consumer across lots of platforms. We know really well at all times what the consumer is looking like.
Two main sources, from platforms themselves who issue loans, as well as the credit bureaus.
Lots of alternative data sources as well. From a modeling standpoint, we have PhD researchers where all they do every day is research how to model the consumer, see what the latest trends are, and then finally access. None of this matters unless you have really good access across lots of different platforms.