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Dark Matter  /  Special Situations
Practice 02

Institutional capital for the situations other capital declines.

USD 5 to 25 million, arranged through institutional joint ventures and co-investment partners. Complexity, time pressure, distress, and assets with no natural home.

At a glance
Ticket range
USD 5–25m
Capital
Institutional JV + co-investment
Screen
Yes or no within 3 days
Fastest signing
Under 60 days from first contact

The Common Property

Someone needs an answer sooner than an institution can give one.

A credit committee is slow by design. Three approval layers. A monthly calendar. An incentive structure that punishes the wrong yes far harder than the wrong no.

With a thirty-day window, that design is the problem. It is the most reliable reason a sound asset changes hands below its worth. Our answer is structural. Our partners have transacted with us before, in structures already negotiated. Nobody meets anybody for the first time. The only open question is the asset.

Practice 02

Terms we can state before we know the asset.

5–25m

Ticket range in USD, arranged through institutional joint ventures and co-investment partners.

0days

To a yes or a no on whether we pursue the situation.

<60days

Our fastest first contact to signing.

2–3partners

The institutions we take a situation to. The ones whose mandate actually fits.

Why Speed Is Structural

What sits between the conversation and the money.

Not a claim about working harder. A claim about who has transacted before.

Committee-based capital
Monthly cycle
Deal team
Credit
Investment committee
Three approval layers, each on its own calendar
Dark Matter
Partners we have transacted with before
One conversation
Screened in 3 days · signed in under 60
What Makes A Situation Ours

Four conditions. We usually see two or three at once.

Time pressure

A counterparty deadline. Expiring exclusivity. A maturity date. A financing window that closes with the rate environment. A permit or interconnection queue that ignores quarterly cycles.

Complexity others will not underwrite

Multi-jurisdiction holding structures. Unclear title. Litigation overhang. Contested minority positions. Assets whose economics reward understanding how they operate, not how a teaser describes them.

Stressed balance sheets

Restructuring, covenant breach, insolvency-adjacent processes, and forced sellers. The asset underneath the situation interests us. The distress itself does not.

Succession and orphaned assets

No natural buyer. A founder exiting. A manager winding down. A legacy portfolio inside a group that no longer wants it. These price best precisely because a relationship finds them, not a process.

How We Move

From first contact to signed.

The dates below show how a special situation actually runs on our side. They hold because nothing in the chain gets built from scratch. We do not work faster than other people.

Days 1–3

The first call is a screen, not a pitch.

Within three days we say whether the situation is ours. Both answers help you. Only the slow maybe wastes your time, and firms unwilling to say no deal in slow maybes. When it is not ours, we usually name whose it is.

Days 4–14

Diligence at the pace the window allows.

We work the asset, the structure, and the counterparty in parallel. A thirty-day window forbids a waterfall. We never skip the operating reality of the asset. In hydro, biomass, towers, and data centres, that is where the surprises live.

Days 15–30

Structure, and the partner it actually fits.

We take the situation to the two or three institutions whose mandate genuinely covers it, in a structure we have used with them before. That conversation takes days, not a fundraising cycle. You learn which partners, and why each one, in writing.

Days 30–60

Signed.

Our fastest special situation went from first contact to signature in under sixty days. That is a relationship claim, not an efficiency claim. The partner knew our work. The structure had precedent. The documentation existed. Only the asset needed underwriting.

FAQ

Plain answers.

What ticket sizes does Dark Matter arrange?

USD 5 to 25 million, through institutional joint ventures and co-investment partners.

How fast do we get an answer?

You get a yes or a no within three days. Our fastest signing took under sixty days from first contact.

Which situations fit this practice?

Time pressure, complexity other capital declines, stressed balance sheets, succession, and orphaned assets. We usually see two or three at once.

Does Dark Matter invest its own money?

No. We arrange, structure, and negotiate institutional capital. Dark Matter AG is an advisory firm, not a licensed financial institution.

Submit a situation, confidentially.

The asset, the size, the clock, and what makes it awkward. The awkward part is usually the reason it is ours. A partner reads it. You get a yes or a no within three days.

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