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Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) has always had a culture of intellectual curiosity. Since its foundation in 2011, the search for new challenges and frontiers has led the firm to all corners of securitization. From areas as disparate as single-family rental and commercial real estate NPLs to marketplace lending and solar. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the firm is active across a wide array of structured finance areas, including ABS consumer lending, CMBS, MBS, and CLOs, as well as esoterics such as aviation, and whole business securitizations.

Mayer Brown’s strategy is to have genuine strength, depth and expertise across all securitization asset classes. The firm employs over 100 lawyers specializing in structured finance, works on well over 250 deals a year and regularly tops the league tables. This ability to combine comprehensive breadth with deep-seated expertise earned it not one but two awards from the market in 2020: best ABS Law Firm and best RMBS Law Firm.

Many CLO managers went into 2020 aggressively positioned, with a high percentage of portfolio assets rated triple-C and on the cusp. When the pandemic hit, a wave of downgrades drove these same managers into bouts of forced selling and severely limited purchases of new assets. But not GoldenTree Asset Management.

Waterfall Asset Management is one of the largest structured product-focused alternative investment managers by assets under management. It is a testament to the firm’s skill, dedication, and innovation that this year it won awards both as issuer – RMBS deal of the year – and as hedge fund investor of the year. Waterfall manages approximately $9.5bn of assets across a variety of co-mingled funds, funds-of-one, separately managed accounts, a publicly-traded REIT, and a private equity fund.

If there was ever a year when the confidence and insight of a first-rate accounting firm was particularly needed, it was 2020. Facing stiff competition from its peers, Deloitte’s depth and breadth of experience and expertise in structured finance was called on and recognised by the market as Accounting Firm of the Year across multiple sectors.

Golub Capital has won the GlobalCapital 2020 awards for Middle Market CLO Manager of the Year and Middle Market CLO Deal of the Year. These awards continue the firm’s long track record of market leadership in middle market CLOs. They also reflect the power and resilience of Golub Capital’s sponsor finance platform through the Covid-19 crisis. The firm has been the top middle market CLO issuer by volume for the past eight years, according to Creditflux data.

When the 2007-8 crisis hit, appetite for analytics using macro forecasts to project tranche-level impacts across structured finance was fairly limited. There were models that could forecast the performance of residential mortgages, but few issuers or investors saw the need to try to determine how, for example, unemployment might affect a specific RMBS tranche.

The risk transfer market has been growing for years, with new jurisdictions, new collateral types, and more issuers waking up to the potential of the tool. But while investors welcomed debut deals from Canada, Japan, and Mexico, there was always one country which was the biggest prize of all. Last year, finally, the US stirred for real, with a deal between JP Morgan and PGGM hopefully firing the starting gun on a major market expansion. Owen Sanderson reports.

The rapid economic recovery from the pandemic is causing yields to tighten sharply in the securitization market, pushing investors to explore more esoteric ABS sectors and even private credit. Jennifer Kang reports.

US CLO deals are flooding into the market at a record pace, stretching bankers, lawyers and rating agencies to the limit and challenging the capacity of investors to absorb the heavy volume. There are no signs of slowing down but the oversupply of deals, alongside refinancings and resets, might eventually weigh on spreads, increase manager tiers and cause indigestion.

As part of GlobalCapital’s awards survey, we asked securitization participants what they wanted from their banks. The results emphasized the importance of market knowledge, more than anything else. Other important qualities sought after included strength of the team and their ability to deal in difficult market conditions, regardless of sector. League table positions mattered less. We also asked you what your outlook was for the second half of 2021. Most expect ABS, RMBS and CMBS spreads to remain stable, but there’s also a sizable number of folks who believe spreads may either tighten or widen slightly. The only exception was expectation for CLO spreads, which very few expect will widen. A big thank you to those who participated in the survey. We’d welcome any suggestions on how we can improve next year!

CLP Power Hong Kong's latest $300m bond offered a rare bit of stability in a volatile market, making the well-established borrower popular with investors — but only for the right price.