Latest news
Latest news
Lower pricing across CLO capital structure does little to improve equity arbitrage
Manager tightens triple-A pricing by 27bp and avoids refinancing some junior mezzanine notes
Spread on triple-A rated notes 4bp wide of recent tights
More articles
More articles
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CLO refi and reset activity has departed from its usual forms, with some managers resetting a single deal in a limited time frame, while others take the opportunity to switch tranches from fixed to floating, or focus refi efforts on a limited number of tranches. Managers don't want to lose the opportunity presented by current market conditions to save costs, and are seeking different solutions to optimise their structures. -
TCW Asset Management has reset a CLO issued in the early phase of Covid for the second time, extending the life of the deal to five years.
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Kayne Anderson Capital has refinanced the mezzanine tranches of a deal originally priced in 2019 in an unusual repricing that left the senior notes intact.
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Credit insurers are said to be dipping into CLO equity risk — not as cash investors allocating to alternative managers, but through directly insuring retention notes. This comes against a backdrop of more interest from insurers in junior corporate risk through the SRT market.
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Spreads on triple-A notes have once again begun to tighten, following a pause while the market digested the heavy flow of new supply. Market participants expect further tightening could follow from June.
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Investor appetite for triple-B CLO notes has been a powerful lever encouraging managers to tweak regular CLO structures to boost the size of this tranche and diverting excess spread to shore up the rating. Colloquially known as ‘Kroll deals’, from the rating agency that rates these issues, some managers have structured tranches as large as $100m to satisfy insurers’ quest for yield. But the structure relies in part on sourcing loans at low prices.
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UK small business lender SME Capital could bring one of the first true SME CLO deals in Europe to market, once it builds up a large enough pool of collateral. The lender has just announced a funding deal with structured credit funds Prytania and Scio Capital, which will allow it to expand its lending capacity and build towards a full sized portfolio.
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Covid-era deals looking for cheaper liability stacks are beginning to flood the market with refi and reset transactions, as they hit the end of their one year non-calls. Canyon Capital has reset and increased the size of Canyon CLO 2020-1, cutting 74bp off the margin of a senior tranche originally priced in May 2020.
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More managers are eyeing the rare US CLO structure which combines both leveraged loans and high yield bonds, in search of more flexibility, and to capitalize on the mispricing between the high yield and leveraged loan markets.
