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Hertz’s flirtation with bankruptcy has sparked a debate in the asset-backed securities market over the fate of the company’s rental car ABS trusts. But if Hertz succumbs to the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, various safeguards in its ABS documentation should result in minimal damage to bondholders, reiterating a key strength of securitization in times of crisis. -
The fallout from the Covid-19 crisis has touched nearly every economic and employment sector, from the largest corporations to the smallest businesses. The pain has prompted an unprecedented policy response aimed at rescuing economies and markets, and further measures are likely to come. US commercial real estate has been especially impacted, with commercial mortgage lending slowing dramatically, already struggling retailers going dark across the country and a likely rethinking of the use of space following a nationwide experiment in working from home.
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Europe’s SMEs are in trouble. The coronavirus pandemic has zeroed revenues and threatens their very existence. They last faced a big threat in the 2008 crisis when bank lending dried up and a recession took hold. Back then, securitization took a lot of the blame as the cause, but this time it offers a route to rescue.
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As Western societies begin to contemplate life returning to some semblance of normality, the financial industry is working out how best to balance the understandable desire to get back to how things were before the crisis with the very real threat of a new and more deadly wave of coronavirus brought on by a mass-return to offices. GlobalCapital’s Silas Brown spoke with Peter Openshaw, a specialist in immunology and virology and professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College, about the transmission of Covid-19 and how banks, investors and companies can reduce the risk of infection.
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The coronavirus pandemic has led to widespread consumer and household balance sheet pressure. With lay-offs and furloughs cascading across industries, there is the likelihood many will be unable to meet basic needs while the economy remains shut down, and servicing debt becomes less feasible the longer the crisis goes on.
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Volkswagen is one of the world’s biggest car companies and, in many years, Europe’s biggest corporate bond issuer. But being an A3/BBB+ rated credit with a strong following in the market does not guarantee you can refinance a €200bn debt load when a pandemic shuts down nearly all the world’s developed economies.
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The coronavirus crisis looks to be a once in a career event for many who work in capital markets in terms of just how much of the economy is being impacted. It has frozen some markets, heightened illiquidity and the shut off of a primary pipeline that, before the pandemic, was expected to produce another robust year of new issuance across securitized assets.
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The CLO market is still struggling to find equilibrium as the coronavirus pandemic spreads. The Federal Reserve’s expansion of its Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility (TALF) to include CLO paper as eligible collateral was cheered upon announcement last week. But some puzzling limitations to the Fed’s terms will do little to help the market reboot.
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GlobalCapital speaks with Funding Circle head of US regulatory affairs and social impact, Ryan Metcalf, about the pitfalls of the US government’s Paycheck Protection Program, the hurdles for fintech companies, and other measures the Trump administration can take to protect small businesses.
