Europe

However the collateral will total at least £370.4 million (US$424.5 million), including a £62.7 million prefunding account; the weighted average coupon of the collateral is 4%.

The U.S. CLO manager breaks the ice with its first euro-denominated deal, which priced Friday and will close in May when it is about 75% ramped up.

The €413.5 million BlackRock European CLO V is the fourth euro-denominated CLO to launch this month, and asset manager's first since BlackRock Euro CLO IV priced in November.

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.