Jefferies subsidiary and Stonyrock plan mid-market alternative manager stake acquisitions
The new joint venture will invest in private equity, credit, hedge funds, real estate, venture, and infrastructure firms

Blackstone follows in footsteps of KKR and Ares by converting to corporation
The conversion is anticipated to be effective from 1 July

Loan trading round-up: CLO managers fall out of love with First Data
An analysis of loan trading among CLO managers in February shows that First Data is falling down the pecking order with managers selling $182 million of the company's loans

Shenkman targets $500 million for opportunistic credit fund
Shenkman’s opportunistic fund will aim to take advantage of the volatility in the market

Moving on from the late 2018 hangover
It might be too early to call a full recovery, but it’s fair to say that the US loan market is back on track with $48 billion of institutional issuance in 2019 — 88% of which is made up of new issues

New manager Resco lands ex-credit head to found advisory board
Resco Asset Management, a London based asset manager set up last year, has appointed the first of an anticipated three advisory board members

Belgian pension fund appoints JP Morgan to run allocations to alternative investments
Hydralis, the statutory pension manager of Belgium water utility Vivaqua, has appointed JP Morgan to manage the fund’s allocation to unlisted assets for an eight years period, Creditflux has learned.  

Credit manager Post unveils new leadership structure
The reshuffle follows the departure of Post Advisory's chief investment officer   

Affinion skipped interest payment impacts small number of CLOs
Only two CLO managers could be affected by the debt of Affinion Group, who skipped its scheduled 19 Feb interest payment ($22.2 million) to its first-lien 2022 term loan holders 

Regulation stifles SRTs, but banks and investors revel in quarter-four outperformance
Over the course of 2018 there was roughly €6.5 billion of issuance in the market for significant risk transfer (SRT) deals, sources say, with the last three months understood to be the busiest quarter on record

Loans recover slightly after late-2018 havoc
Secondary loan prices have ticked higher this year, although they are still some way off the levels reached before the fourth quarter slump. However, M&As are starting to fill the new issue pipeline
 

Just because there have always been loan fees doesn’t mean they are the right way of doing things
Scrapping loan transfer costs of up to €3,500 per transaction is a bridge Europe should cross for the sake of liquidity

Loan sell-off leaves some CLO warehouses out of the money
The December sell-off in the loan market may have been good for CLO equity but it left many warehouses out of the money, according to several sources

AP4 keeps eye on direct unlisted investments, amid 2018 losses
AP4, the SEK 349.3 billion ($37.3 billion) pension fund, has lost 0.2% after costs from its entire portfolio for the year 2018  

Tail wags dog as European CLOs' 108bp benchmark drags loans
European CLOs usually price on the back of where underlying loans are printing, but this year the reverse looks to be true

CLOs are not like CDOs, says Barclays, but warns of loan quality impact
CLOs are far removed from the kinds of structured products that contributed to the 2008/09 global financial crisis, Barclays has argued in a wide-ranging research piece this week

Universal-Investment names CEO in management team shake-up
Universal-Investment, the €411bn asset manager, has appointed a new chief executive officer who will begin in that job from May  

Ares grows credit 34% with direct lending boost, but high yield takes rough ride in Q4
Ares Management Corporation reported strong returns for its European direct lending strategies in the fourth quarter of 2018. But the firm's overall revenues slumped and its US loan funds and high yield strategies were hit by the volatile credit market 

Podcast: Secondary loans rebound, CLOs widen and covenants deteriorate
Creditflux, Debtwire and Xtract discuss the current state of the market  

Q4 2018, which had loan price volatility without defaults, was close to nirvana for CLO investors
The current vintage of CLOs could be the best ever if the volatility in Q4, when retail funds dumped loans, repeats itself, says our columnist Thomas Majewski

Silence is not golden: loan investors fret over terms in Apollo-sponsored deals
Leveraged loan investors have expressed concern over terms in some Apollo-sponsored deals, which allow the borrower to incur additional first lien debt that not only matures earlier than the existing debt, but also does not trigger “most favoured nations” (MFN) protection for the outstanding debt

Retail fund pain is a CLO manager’s gain
Retail funds dumped loans in record volumes late in 2018, creating ideal conditions for CLOs to capitalise with performing credits available in the mid-90s for the first time in years

Carlyle performance dips in Q4, but credit teams ride global volatility
Credit fund performance dipped for the Carlyle Group in the fourth quarter, as market volatility and fund outflows put a dent in the industry’s much stronger performance of the previous three quarters

Performing credit tops distressed credit for Blackstone, but credit AUM declines
The firm is looking to boost its direct lending business to gain $10 billion of available capital over the next couple of years

Apollo's credit funds report gains in 2018 despite Q4 slump
Apollo saw $21.6 billion inflows throughout the quarter leading to a record total assets under management of $280.3 billion. The firm, however, reported a net loss throughout the quarter