By selling the cases into the fund, they immediately get their...

By selling the cases into the fund, they immediately get their investment basis back and clip 85% of profits above a 15% return - on an IRR basis, it's substantially better to have the investments in the fund than on balance sheet. The other nuance is that loading the existing US cases into the fund will speed up distributions from the fund - because it's a European waterfall, no cash comes out to IMF until Fortress' 15% pref + return of capital has occurred, meaning that no cash would come out for years if IMF didn't sell the existing portfolio into the fund. Given that the US fund is now 73% allocated, as flagged in the 1H18 results i expect they're already out raising the second US fund, and the likelihood is they'll get better terms on the second raising, so it's in the company's interests to fill the fund 1 allocation as soon as possible.