Treble top: CSAM wins best manager again
Returning to the Landmark Hotel in London, the 2023 Creditflux manager awards looked back at a year that saw the CLO market in flux. After the stability of 2021, the markets hit a rocky patch and US CLO triple As ranged from 110-290 basis points.

Moving fast pays off for hedge funds
2020 was an up and down year in credit, and credit hedge fund managers had to move quickly to capture opportunities from the dislocations that inevitably opened up

Credit pickers need luck to avoid OC trap
We know what you’re thinking: is my CLO failing its OC test? The truth is, in all this volatility, it can be hard to keep track, unless your deal has high quality liquid loans

 

Still weighed down by 2015 oil price slump
It’s three years since the depths of the oil crisis but offshore service companies — such as the helicopter businesses that transport workers to oil rigs — are not seeing lift-off in prices or profits

Direct lending leverage takes off
HPS, NXT and Crescent target mid market with leverage in Q4. By Grace Jennings-Edquist

Finding horizontal and vertical angles
2017 CLOs where managers hold a vertical strip have higher spread portfolios and higher leverage than those with a horizontal risk retention investment. By Tanvi Gupta

CLO boom encourages new ideas
Volumes are up, spreads are down and risk retention is a doddle. That must mean it’s time to push the boat out and innovate

Trading ideas for volatile times
Turmoil in the credit markets last month prompted a wide range of views and recommendations. Here is our pick of the most eye-catching research

Apparel and accessories: Fast fashion leaves mid tier in a hole
Apparel and accessory company balance sheets are starting to resemble a pair of fashionably ripped jeans

Loan covenants: Investors helpless as borrowers go free
Freebies, builder baskets and side cars are just some of the ways loan covenants are being loosened

Toys R Us: Trouble in toy town
One of the world's biggest retailers may be just one bad quarter away from a debt restructuring – or bankruptcy

Toll road operators: Caution: no traffic ahead
With a monopoly that everyone uses, toll road companies would be perfect borrowers – if only their roads weren't so empty

Fine-tuning the momentum signal
Daniel Haesen, Patrick Houweling and Jeroen van Zundert describe an approach that slashes volatility and improves returns in momentum strategies for corporate bonds

Swiss Re’s $750m solvency trigger coco is much riskier than it seems
The new coco from Swiss Re pays 6.375% annually but the trigger is set in an unusual way. Jan De Spiegeleer, Jan Dhaene and Wim Schoutens look at the risk of investors losing out

Spotlight on Asian electronics companies: Giants teeter as Koreans’ sales grow
With Korean companies winning in growth markets and very competitive on price, giants such as Sony and Sharp are struggling.

Preserving and conserving
Stable revenues, good liquidity and manageable leverage have kept yields in the consumer packaging sector steady in the long term

Calculating risk in real time
Luca Capriotti, Jacky Lee and Matthew Peacock describe a new technique that can hugely reduce the time taken to calculate credit risk in a Monte Carlo simulation

Viewpoint - Buy inefficiency
Hildene Capital’s Brett Jefferson and John Scannell explain the merits and perils of trups CDOs

Credit spotlight – cash guzzlers
The recovery in oil prices has not helped refineries, where overcapacity and weak demand have seen cash reserves go up in smoke.

Sticking to first principles
When other credit hedge funds went long and levered, Brownstone Asset Management prospered by doing what a hedge fund should do.

Doing the right thing
Babson Capital is convinced that its fundamentals-based, long-term approach is the proper way to do business. It worked in the last cycle, and this is no time to look for short-term fixes. Facing their biggest test since the product emerged in the late 1990s, many CLO managers seem unsure how to confront an unprecedented decline in par values, soaring triple C buckets, rising defaults and the prospect of junior management fees being cut off. But the team that runs CLOs for one of the biggest and best established US managers has strong views about the right approach.

Synthetic volumes fall, but the market lives on
Deutsche Bank tops the 2007 Creditflux league table of CSOs (synthetic CDOs) for the first time

Primus hungry for risk as spreads widen
Primus hungry for risk as spreads widen

Law firms ride the CDO boom times
Law firms ride the CDO boom times