Correction: Orchard Liquid Credit Fund performance
In the May issue of the Creditflux magazine we incorrectly stated in our performance tables the year-to-date return for Orchard Liquid Credit Fund, which is up 10.66%

Invesco suffers Moody's downgrade after struggling to delever balance sheet
Moody's has downgraded Invesco Ltd from A2 to A3 citing the "challenges Invesco has faced delevering its balance sheet following the acquisition of Oppenheimer Funds", the rating agency said in a notice

'Nochu covenant' leaves big CLO managers in a trading bind
Stipulations pushed into CLOs by the world’s largest CLO investor Norinchukin to limit its exposure to covenant-lite loans are causing headaches for managers on its approved list hoping to use the dislocation to build par  

Apollo earmarks $20 billion for dislocation fundraising over 12 months
Apollo's returns for corporate credit, structured credit and direct origination in the first quarter were down 8.3%, 14.7% and 4.8%, respectively, but the firm is looking to launch various credit strategies, including capital solutions, dislocation strategies and distressed strategies, that it “expects to accumulate $20 billion over the next year”

Credit pickers need luck to avoid OC trap

CLO market braces for another wave of loan downgrades
A wave of negative rating actions swept the leveraged loan and CLO market in April. “Companies will look to secure incremental capital which will lead to further rating pressure,” says Philip Raciti, portfolio manager and head of US performing credit at Bardin Hill Investment Partners

Listed CLO fund reports 45% NAV fall in March
Marble Point Loan Financing suffered a 45% drop in net asset value total return in March, according to a portfolio update from the $158.4 million listed fund

Seven points basis opens up in CLO triple Bs - but Investcorp trades well to defy trend
Triple B rated tranches once again swamped the secondary CLO market yesterday and trading levels suggest the basis between bonds on negative watch/outlook versus those not subject to a downgrade is about seven points

Moody's joins Fitch and S&P in CLO negative watch camp as it acts on 976 tranches globally
Moody’s has put tranches from 358 US CLOs and 39 European CLOs on review for downgrade, in an announcement that places 976 tranches (859 in the US 117 in Europe) at risk of losing their original rating

OC health check: another two CLOs fail senior OC tests
Two senior overcollateralisation test failures number among 26 deals joining the list this week of CLOs breaching their OC tests in April, according to the latest trustee reports on CLO-i.

Credit Rendezvous: recovery begins, but is it U, V or even W?
Investing in credit is not as easy as ABC. The coronavirus crisis has crushed valuations and although most assets will eventually pull to par, no one is sure how the recovery will pan out

Structured credit fund loses 32.4% in March as junior US CLO debt slumps
Volta Finance’s net asset value dropped 32.4% in March, according to a monthly report released yesterday. US CLO debt was the weakest performer for the structured credit fund, managed by Axa Investment Managers, losing 41.3%.

Beneath the triple C: $31.6 billion of CLO credits feel downgrade pain
March madness took a toll on CLOs as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s downgraded 4.25% of the portfolios in the US and 1.84% in Europe to triple C or below in just one month (some of these were already triple C rated, only to fall further).

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

Structured credit dragged very wide — but CLOs stand to gain
Senior tranches of securitisations widened 220% in less than a month as the coronavirus pandemic has meant an increase in systemic risk — a sharp turnaround from the past few months when idiosyncratic risks were being cited as the main concern for structured credit investors.

SME CLO features PDL mechanism
Details of the groundbreaking Alhambra SME Funding 2019-1 — the first 2.0 CLO backed by loans to small and midsized enterprises — were revealed at the Direct Lending Forum jointly hosted by Creditflux and Debtwire last month.

‘Hoard credit’ says PM as markets swing
As Creditflux went to press, the covid-19 death toll in Italy surged by 700 after two days of slowing, and the US congress agreed a $2 trillion stimulus package.

We’ve got time to work this out
You might think direct lenders are very exposed to economic downturns. But at the Creditflux-Debtwire event last month, managers said they felt they had a few months to rectify problems

We’ve survived before, we can do so again

Credit funds at a glance

A round-up of fundraising and people moves in credit

CLOs at a glance: CLO primary market grinds to a halt
A round-up of CLO performance

Ucits at a glance: Long-short approach lifts Pictet to the top