(Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group AG has hired BlackRock Inc. to help sell a portfolio of structured bonds for the Swiss bank, becoming the latest entity to tap the money manager in a time of crisis.
BlackRock's Financial Markets Advisory group has been selling off securities over the last two weeks, including pieces of collateralized loan obligations, commercial mortgage bonds and niche asset backed debt, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Bonds backed by auto, credit card, student and aircraft loans or leases were also included in the lists of securities put up for sale, which included at least $300 million of bonds, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private transactions.
Representatives for BlackRock and Credit Suisse declined to comment.
The sales come weeks after Credit Suisse was sold to UBS Group AG in a state-brokered deal, and just a few months after the Swiss bank's structured team moved over to a new company called Atlas SP Partners, which is backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. The merger will see large parts of Credit Suisse's investment bank wound down in what UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher called a bigger deal to manage than even those during the height of the 2008 financial crisis.
This is BlackRock's second sale process this month in structured bonds, with its Financial Markets Advisory group having also been tapped by the US government to help sell $114 billion of securities amassed from failed lenders Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. Those include agency mortgage backed securities, collateralized mortgage obligations and CMBS. BlackRock has been charged with selling those assets for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which said the firm would seek a "gradual and orderly" process.
The move follows Credit Suisse's announcement of a "new strategy and transformation plan" in late October, which included job cuts as well as "significant exposure reduction" to securitized products, such as collateralized loan obligations.
The $8.6 trillion asset manager has a history of swooping in to sell old inventory in troubled times. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve and US Department of the Treasury awarded contracts to BlackRock to manage $130 billion of bad debt formerly on the books of Bear Stearns and American International Group Inc. The Fed also turned to BlackRock to help oversee debt-buying programs to help stabilize the economy at the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
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