Points up front: From drafting CLO docs to writing crime thrillers
Nicola Bashforth, a popular figure in the CLO business, announced last month that she had left the industry to return to Lancashire in England and try her hand at writing novels

Points up front: How much do I owe you?
Payment systems in the credit industry had a bad August

The surge in index tranche trading has resulted in a deep, liquid and nuanced set of market dynamics
Welshcake emerges from his bunker to find CLOs still standing and the CSO market getting back to business

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

They said it: "Imagine a garden party and all of a sudden a big wasp shows up"
On Creditflux’s US CLO webinar last month, Napier Park’s head of US CLO investments Serhan Secmen described the March sell-off as a garden party

Points up front: Introducing Downton Flux

During last month’s broadcast of the Creditflux Manager of the Year, we were inundated with messages of congratulations for the award winners via a live feed...

Around 20% of the US CLO market has traded this year — not bad for an asset class that is seen as illiquid
CLOs can trade cheaply and directly, which helps keep volumes steady even in a crisis

If you’re not finding black talent, you’re not trying hard enough
In the past few weeks, it has been easy to put up our billboards and tweet our condemnation of the treatment of black people. Now we need to change the way companies work

It takes just a few CLO collateral managers selling into the distressed community to start cracks forming
It is becoming increasingly clear that CLO collateral managers need to improve their collaboration efforts in distressed situations

Past returns: GoldenTree CLO trades over par
Five years ago we reported that the equity in a GoldenTree 1.0 CLO was in demand, despite the threat that its position could be marked down to zero

Points up front: I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t quite catch that…
Creditflux has been running a series of webinars on CLOs and private credit, and despite the risk of unreliable technology, these have been held with few wifi-related issues...

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

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

Points up front: Senior tranches pay down despite junior OC passes
192 US CLOs have breached at least one over-collateralisation test, according to CLO-i, but at least two deals have not followed the conventional path

I take strength from the composure investors have shown when told their payments are being deferred
It’s tempting to head to the beach or grab a CLO distribution, but investing is all about playing the long game

A lot of CLO portfolios look similar and I’ve never been one to follow the herd
Zais's Vinnie Ingato takes our credit quiz

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

The CMBS talf proposal is simple and effective. A similar approach for CLOs would be welcomed
It’s great that government is trying to boost securitisations, but they’re missing the mark for 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

They said it: "The CLO rally had nothing to do with talf"
"The CLO rally had nothing to do with talf"

Points up front: Liquidating CLO can’t escape Standard & Poor’s
With over 1,000 CLO tranches on watch across the big three rating agencies, it’s good to see rigorous standards are being maintained and little things like CLO liquidation are not excusing deals from detailed scrutiny

CLO investors should be able to see live secondary trading levels
Olga Chernova of Sancus Capital takes our credit quiz

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

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