Credit funds at a glance
Fund performance, fund raising and LP commitments

CLOs at a glance
New CLOs this month

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.

CLOs march onward despite broken arb
Speakers at Creditflux’s CLO Symposium agreed that the arbitrage has been terrible this year. But they were also united in their pleasant surprise that this hasn’t shut the market down

Celebrating diversity
The Creditflux London Women in CLOs event saw 100 participants gather for an evening of networking, empowerment and mentorship at the Landmark Hotel

Fund performance
A roundup of fund performance

Look deeper to uncover ESG performance in CLOs
New research from Fitch Ratings, which examines ESG Score analysis from Sustainable Fitch, examines how European CLOs are performing on ESG criteria and has confirmed that the wording in documentation really does make a difference — but only if you look below the surface.

Rope-a-dope brings knock-out returns
Post-pandemic US and European CLOs delivered mid-teen equity returns in 2022, despite a barrage of weak macroeconomic news and what could have been a heavyweight Libor mismatch  

We made the most of a tricky situation
The contrast between 2021 and the following 12 months could not have been starker. But although some heavy hitters remained on the sidelines, 94 US CLO managers priced new deals in 2022

Not every CLO can be a winner
The CLO industry has undeniably performed well enough to justify the plaudits it receives. But there will always be some unloved CLO tranches that slip into triple C territory

Weren’t there more of us than this?
According to this year’s Creditflux CLO Census, the CLO industry is not feeling optimistic. Some investors have vanished and managers have not taken advantage of helpful market conditions

We can cope with downgrades again

Can someone call the triple A? We’ve stalled
CLO issuers are in need of AAA roadside assistance. Despite the emergence of new buyers, a lack of senior CLO investors — particularly US banks — has brought the primary market to a halt  

You seem familiar
The overlap between European CLOs has risen to 51.6%, but the largest issuers are only slightly more aligned to their peers at 55.19% — so bonds are proving to be an important differentiator

Arb work pays off
With day-one arbitrage alone delivering projected CLO cash-on-cash returns of 20-25%, 2021 may have been the best year ever for equity investors — at least until CLO spreads began to widen  

HY fund is exception to rule of CLOs
CLO funds have had back-to-back years of outperformance versus credit, proving the asset class is a great place to invest, rain or shine. But a Wasserstein HY fund was the star performer in 2021  

I’ll see your 2020 and raise you 2021
Discounted loans, Libor floors and bond flexibility helped make 2021 an even better year for CLO returns than 2020, as US CLOs distributed 15.54% and European CLOs paid 13.93% annualised

A fresh approach to loss distribution
Considering how cash balances change over time, loss distribution models can look very different to conventional thinking. So is your CLO’s pricing based on incorrect assumptions?  

These CLO docs could be better
It seems there’s not much to worry about if you’re in the CLO market. In Creditflux’s CLO Census, voters said docs should follow a template as Jefferies, AGL and Hayfin emerge as rising stars

An alternative way of looking at CLO overlap
Analysing CLO collateral to look for overlap is critical for any CLO investor, but it is normally done either within a portfolio of CLOs or by bilaterally comparing two managers. In one of its latest research pieces, Moody’s Analytics has taken a different approach

CLO wormhole opens as deal pricing blurs
The CLO prints you see today might have happened a month ago. No, we’re not travelling back in time. Instead, a trend toward locking in senior notes a month early is skewing market pricing

Woah, we’re halfway there
Judging by the 2020 vintage, European CLO overlap is 50%. But varied approaches to holding bonds and the many loans managers turn down mean there are ways for issuers to outperform

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

Answering the “what if?” question
CLOs can be complex, and efficiently calculating trading scenarios even more complex. But new tools are available to help managers quickly model hypothetical scenarios

Waiting for afters
Day one arb remains important, but last year there were opportunities aplenty in the secondary market, which put the onus on printing CLOs and waiting for the day after non-call periods expired