Fracking servicer FTS files for chapter 11 protection
Fracking servicer FTS International filed for chapter 11 protection in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas Houston yesterday. The credit is not widely featured in CLOs with only nine managers holding $47.9 million of FTI’s term loans

US investors piled into structured credit and private lending in 2019, Gapstow finds
US institutional investors' allocations to 'alternative credit' increased 12% year-over-year in 2019, according to research by fund of funds manager Gapstow Capital Partners

Fallen angels and financials feel heat as CDS indices roll
CDS indices are rolling into new contracts today, with outgoing series of iTraxx Europe and Crossover widening sharply from the market’s open on technical as well as fundamental factors

Brevan Howard raids ExodusPoint for credit derivative specialists
Brevan Howard has hired credit derivative specialists from ExodusPoint Capital Management with a view to expanding in credit options

Fair Oaks rotates to Euro CLO equity after 32% gain on double Bs
Fair Oaks Capital is starting to rotate back to CLO equity positions after taking advantage of the stabilising market and using profits from its higher-quality, more opportunistic trades earlier this year to carefully dial up the risk

Blackstone reveals CLO originator NAV was understated for four months
Blackstone says the net asset value of class A units in its privately-offered CLO originator were understated between 31 March and 30 June

Beneath the triple C: slowest downgrade pace puts market in recovery mode
The CLO market recovery is starting to benefit from borrower downgrades falling to their slowest rate since the coronavirus crisis began in March

Ellington winds down European CLO warehouse as PM joins rival
Ellington Management is winding down its European CLO warehouse with Barclays, while Ellington's European CLO operations lead has left for a rival firm

CLO equity claws back earlier losses to return 7.63% in Q2
CLO equity returned 7.63% in the second quarter on the back of leveraged loans rallying, according to Flat Rock Global's CLO equity index. Market prices have partially regained losses from Q1, in which CLO equity plunged by 30.41% following the coronavirus outbreak and the implementation of lockdowns globally

Dislocation and costly payment debacle highlight loan tech lag
Coronavirus-led dislocation in the leveraged loan market, as well as a bank’s recent claims of human error in making a large loan payment, underscore the industry’s need to embrace long-overdue efficiency improvements

Sponsors leave lenders holding equity-like risk, claims Zwirn
Loan investors are being coerced by private equity sponsors and are assuming equity risk without compensation

Credit hedge funds (September 2020)
Monthly credit hedge fund tables

Ucits at a glance: Five funds lift YTD returns above 5%
Five funds have managed to pull their year to date figures above 5%; Loomis Sayles (7.50%), Algebris (5.82%), Pictet (5.53%), Amundi (5.36%) and Advent (5.11%)

Fund performance: Almost a third of credit funds reach positive YTD returns
July has been a successful month for many credit funds, despite the recovery peaking in May and June

CLO funds top rankings, but still have ground to make up
CLOs may have taken a hammering in March but, for the fourth consecutive month, funds that invest in these assets dominate our ranking of the top performing credit funds

Loan leverage in CLOs has risen 1.3 turns, finds S&P
Leverage in US CLO portfolios increased by an average of 1.3 turns compared to the pre-covid-19 loan market, according to new research from S&P Ratings

Libor issue hurt Q2 returns on CLO investments, says Prospect's Eliasek
Prospect Capital Corporation's interest bearing investments generated an annualised yield of 11.4% in the second quarter, down 1% from the first quarter, the firm has revealed - with the decline in Libor to blame for the decrease in its CLO yields, management said on an earnings call today

ETF firm touts low warf stratregy to help cut CLO financing costs
Retail investors will soon have access to CLO investments with two managers launching CLO exchange traded funds this month. Peter Coppa, managing partner at Alternative Access Funds, believes the CLO market will benefit

The Last Tranche with Flat Rock's Bates: mid-market CLO equity proves advantageous in crisis
In this episode of The Last Tranche, Creditflux's Hugh Minch sits down with Flat Rock Global managing director Shiloh Bates. Topics include launching a new CLO fund, the advantage of middle market CLOs in a crisis, and why some risk retention fund investors' equity positions have underperformed

Axa IM fund drops in July as it seeks call on non-paying 2013 CLO
Volta Finance, a publicly listed CLO fund managed by Axa Investment Managers, was down 1.2% in July (after its 11 cents per share dividend payment) due to US dollars depreciating against euros by 4.6% during the month, Axa said in the fund's monthly update

Beneath the triple C: CLOs get their sneakers on as retailers run into bankruptcy
July added further relief to CLO portfolios with the slowest rate of downgrades to triple C since March. US CLO portfolios faced downgrades of $2.18 billion to triple C while European portfolios faced just €59.13 million of such downgrades

New firms are rocking all over the world
Rockford Tower and other small global CLO issuers are showing that you don’t need decades of experience to be successful. It can be better to change the tune rather than repeat the classics

Don’t obsess over the state of your OC cushions
During Creditflux’s live CLO webinar last month, panellists agreed that fighting to keep an over-collateralisation test in compliance could do more harm than good in the long term