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

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

Managers weigh up matters of principal
CLO managers that were able to avoid OC traps made double-digit equity distributions in Q2, despite the headwinds. But these firms tended not to be among those that built the most par

Cut! Cineworld’s cancelled merger boosts CLO OCs
Investors in Cineworld’s $1.9 billion term loan breathed a sigh of relief in July after the UK cinema chain cancelled its merger with Canadian firm Cineplex, with holders repaid in full, according to market sources

Libor basis risk undermines Q3 CLO equity distributions
A technical issue for CLO Libor reset dates in April has hammered July equity payments, leading to a roughly 1% cut to equity cash flows for the second quarter

Fund performance: Credit funds post double-digit gains
June returns have once again been led by CLO funds, as seven out of the top 10 belong to our CLOs category.

Ucits at a glance: Ucits funds march on and erase Q1 losses
95% of Ucits credit funds listed with Creditflux posted positive returns in June to keep up the momentum from May when all but one fund was in positive territory

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

Three years after launch, Rockford Tower joins the elite
The CLO platform launched by King Street Capital Management in 2017 has been crowned Creditflux Manager of the Year

New funds move in as tranche trades take off
Synthetic structured credit funds are proving popular with investors amid a spike in index tranche trading

Fieldwood slips into second bankruptcy as CLOs hold $314 million
CLO managers hold $314.5 million of oil and gas drilling company Fieldwood Energy, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday for the second time in two years 

US CLO single Bs reach post-crisis tights despite rating pressure
US CLO single Bs are trading at their tightest levels since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak and ,while these bonds make up a tiny slice of the market, more and more instances of single B b-wics are ocurring

Majority equity in BlueMountain US CLO goes up for sale
A majority of the equity in BlueMountain CLO 2018-1 is up for sale tomorrow in a sign that Assured Guaranty could be following through on its plan to change its CLO manager’s issuance model

Carlyle defers $4 million CLO management fees in the second quarter
Carlyle Group deferred $4 million subordinate fees on its CLOs in the second quarter, representatives for the firm announced on the company's earnings call on Thursday