How to evaluate CLO managers
Portfolio manager incentives and MVOC volatility are crucial factors for CLO equity investors, says Dagmara Michalczuk

Points up front: Whatever the size, CLO performance dwarfs others
A graphic depicting the investment fund universe was doing the rounds on social media late in 2022...

Past returns: Alhambra CLO paves the way
Five years ago in Creditflux, we reported that Be-Spoke Capital was launching the first SME European CLO since the financial crisis.

Points up front: CLO managers didn’t take advantage of volatility, say CLO managers
Creditflux’s CLO Census shows CLO managers can be hard on themselves

CSAM does the CLO awards double
Winning the Creditflux Manager of the Year award is a feat in itself. Winning it back-to-back in such different markets is an outstanding achievement — and CSAM can take great pride in it

We’ll get through this awkward patch
Wide liabilities have made pricing CLOs trickier in the past few months. But speakers at Creditflux’s CLO Symposium were optimistic that the arbitrage is OK — so long as you can place those triple As

"Wholesale moves into risk areas after internal changes should sound an alarm"
The composition of CLO managers is changing, so management styles may drift  

"It’ll take something special to drag my attention away from Depp/Heard, but Jerome Powell could just do it"
It’s not easy letting go of the past, but May heralds the start of something new in credit

Points up front: "It’s all me, me, me"
A study last month by the University of Marburg found that narcissistic fund managers are up to 34% more likely to deviate from their advertised investment style, and they tend to underperform non-narcissists.

"If omicron paradoxically lowers the temperature of the market, that may be no bad thing"
The global economy is well protected against omicron — and a mild infection may be beneficial

"We again have to flag up information in CLO marketing pitches that can mislead investors"
Cash-on-cash returns, default records and leverage statistics don’t always give CLO investors the full picture  

Past returns: KKR’s unusual CLO liquidation
Five years ago in Creditflux, we reported that junior debt investors in a KKR-managed European CLO voted to alter the deal’s documentation so they could drive a liquidation of the legacy deal, such that they would receive roughly 92% of par

Everyone’s ramping

"In the afternoon I awoke from a pile of willow leaves to discover we had created a Welsh ether-based token"
A localised crypto-currency boom and bust cycle teaches Welshcake (again) that everything becomes correlated in a downturn  

"Watch the IG credit curve — we may see steepening of IG 5s10s and flattening of 10s30s"
Stimulus measures are supporting short tenors, and pension demand for 30-year paper is strong, so 10-year IG credit may have few buyers

"We have to think about the influence of social media like Reddit"
Schroders' Michelle Russell-Dowe takes our credit quiz

People underestimate the impact they can have with ESG
Muzinich's Kirsten Bode takes our credit quiz

Some managers calculated their CLOs were passing OC tests, only to find them failing the next day
Corporate credit downgrade storms have been weathered before, but this one has come out of season

There will surely be jewels in the high yield dung heap, but the risk-reward is more compelling in IG
Whatever the long-term effects of the pandemic, one thing stays the same: IG looks attractive

They said it: There will be a re-tiering of managers after this
"There will be a re-tiering of managers after this"

Where are the gloating I-told-you-so columnists who claimed CLOs would bring global destruction?
We have seen a measured response to the coronavirus crisis: fund managers aren’t collapsing and investors are not shunning CLOs

Past returns: Death by triple Cs? A step too far
15 months ago in Creditflux we reported that corporate credit downgrades, rather than defaults, were the biggest problem facing CLO portfolio managers

Miscast as the villains of the 2008 crisis, CDS may prove to be the heroes of 2020
Credit default swaps provide investors with valuable signals on the depth of the coronavirus crisis

Investors need to ask: can my asset manager survive the crisis?

The opportunities to build par and spread within a CLO haven’t been this plentiful since 2009
Last year’s CLOs could become the benchmark for manager performance