NewCastle Investment Corp., a buy-side arm of Dutch giant Fortis Investment Group, is shopping the notes of a $500 million collateralized debt obligation it is attempting to issue, according to several sell-side analysts. The deal will mark NewCastle's third CDO of structured finance assets and is similar to its previous two transactions. NewCastle CDO III will pool a mix of investment-grade assets, with a heavy concentration in real estate-related ones, to generate the CDOs cash flows, according to outsiders. Deutsche Bank and RBS Greenwich Capital are joint leads on the Rule 144a deal. The manager closed its most-recent CDO earlier this year via Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns (BW, 2/24).
Michael Wirth, cfo and treasurer at NewCastle in New York, did not return a call.
Scott Waynebern, a director on the CDO syndicate at the German Deutsched Bank, did not return a call and Fred Matera, head of the CDO group at Greenwich Capital, declined to comment.