Ankit Aggarwal leaves Bank of America's top U.S. CLO desk for Barings' $55 billion platform

Barings, the Charlotte-based alternative asset manager, said on September 14 that Ankit Aggarwal has joined as Head of Global CLO Issuance and Capital Markets. The seat is new. He will work from New York and report to Adrienne Butler, who has run Barings' global CLO book from Charlotte.

A collateralized loan obligation, or CLO, is a pool of company loans sliced into rated bonds. Insurers and pensions buy the safer slices. The manager picks the loans and collects fees.

The bank that structures and sells the deal is the arranger. Aggarwal spent nearly two decades as that banker. At Barings he will help the firm's $55 billion CLO platform issue new vehicles and find the buyers.

The bank bonus is a fee-year check, often with stock you have not vested yet. The platform seat pays from the fee stream on the deals you help form. A household that already sends a parent wire needs to know which number actually clears this year.

Aggarwal did a five-year dual degree in computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, the public engineering school on Powai Lake in Mumbai, founded in 1958 as India's second IIT. He finished in 2008 and joined Deutsche Bank, the German lender, on its New York CLO origination and structuring desk, later as a vice president. He arrived the year the credit system seized. He stayed through June 2017.

That dual degree is the same STEM ticket a lot of Indian families still point at software. He used it on loan pools and the math that slices them. The coding market can thin out. Structured credit is still hiring people who can model a deal and sit with the buyers.

In July 2017 he moved to Bank of America and later led U.S. CLO banking and structuring, plus distribution of CLO equity, the slice that takes first losses.

Creditflux, which ranks CLO arrangers, put Bank of America's share of U.S. broadly syndicated loan CLO arranging at 17.64 percent in the first quarter of 2026, first among banks. Those are the more liquid leveraged loans that feed most large CLOs.

Octus, another league-table shop, still had the bank first through the first half. The ranking is the firm's. It still tells you he left the bank that was winning the arranging work.

Barings' CLO book was $55 billion as of June 30, 2026, across those loans plus private credit and infrastructure debt. The firm managed $502 billion. It is a subsidiary of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Springfield mutual insurer founded in 1851.

A mutual wants steady coupon income for policyholders. That is why senior CLO bonds keep showing up in insurance portfolios, and why Barings keeps adding people who can sell them.

In May 2026, MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, a major Japanese insurer, closed an 18 percent stake through its Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance unit for $1.44 billion. MassMutual kept 82 percent and control. Insurers already sit on the safe end of CLO bonds. Now one also owns a slice of the manager.

Butler said demand from institutions and insurers is still growing. She hired him to help form new deals and sit with the buyers. He said that is the work he wants.

Barings already manages the loans. It needed someone who has spent years selling the bonds.

Butler has been on this book since 2002, when Babson, a Barings predecessor, bought the loan-management unit out of First Union, the old Charlotte bank. Aggarwal is the markets hire next to that history.

His own package is not in a public filing. Barings is private. Bank managing-director bonuses in a strong fee year often land in the seven figures, with a slice deferred in stock. That is the industry pattern, not his number.

A September hop can leave last year's bonus sitting at the old bank until January. Write down unpaid bonus, unvested stock, and whether the new seat makes you whole.

Bonus and Variable Pay Allocation Benchmarks for First-Gen Professionals is the split on a lumpy year. Career Negotiation When You Were Raised Not to Ask is how you get deferral and sign-on in writing. If a visa sits under the offer, Visa, Job Change, and Benefits Gap Basics for Diaspora Professionals comes before you resign. Run the parent wire against cash that clears in the Family Support Budget Calculator.

The CS dual degree from Powai is now selling a $55 billion credit book in New York. Price the bonus year you are leaving.

This is educational reporting on a private-manager appointment, not career, tax, or investment advice. Individual outcomes depend on deal volume and firm results no press release can promise.