Europe

The transaction is backed by 6,857 loans with a total balance of $835 million, or roughly 13% of the $6.4 billion of commercial vehicle and equipment loans in Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA.

The €413 million transaction will issue exchangeable notes for the five senior tranches, allowing regulated U.S. banks the opportunity to invest, even though the portfolio includes bonds.

It's the busiest start to the year, post-financial crisis, for collateralized loan obligations, according to Thomson Reuters, and nearly 60% higher than the pace set in the first two months of 2017.

Moody's thinks that the risk of early lease terminations is "marginal," since only 0.5% of the vehicles in the collateral pool are old enough to be impacted by bans in place in several European cities.

Avoca CLO V was issued only the second default rating of a subordinate global CLO in the last four years, the result of an unpaid subordinate tranche in an early deal liquidation by manager KKR.

Timothy Bowler, president of the ICE Benchmark Administration, which has been responsible for calculating the index since mid-2013, argues that there is a strong case for keeping it going.

GoldenTree's dual-market CLO manager affiliate is launching its first European CLO after debuting with two U.S. deals totaling more than $1.4 billion in 2017.

The transaction is backed by nearly three times as many Audi, Volkswagen and Skoda as VW's previous UK auto-loan ABS; it also features a longer revolving period.

S&P Global Rating's London office made the rare move to downgrade the junior-most notes in a 2016 CLO issued by a Danish credit manager due to a deterioration in portfolio maintenance levels.

Over 94% of the collateral pool consists of diesel-engine vehicles, even though diesel cars have had waning interest among French drivers in the past decade.