CDOs

Issuance of U.S. collateralized loan obligations climbed to $8.4 billion (via 17 deals) in October, the highest monthly figure since June 2015, according to Thomson Reuters LPC.

This year, industry heavyweights Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Quicken all burst onto the digital lending scene. These big firms may have been latecomers, but their timing was still good, since they came to market amid rising doubts about many of the online lending sector's early entrants.

The risk premium that investors demand for holding CLOs continues to decline as refinancing activity continues to dominate the new issuance, and the trend looks set to continue heading into the final two months of the year.

Investcorp is buying the debt management business of 3i Group for £222 million (US$270.6 million, giving the Bahrain-based private equity firm with one of the larger cross-border CLO management operations.

Managers are refinancing at least 13 collateralized loan obligations totaling $9 billion as the deadline to comply with risk retention approaches.

Amherst Pierpont Securities has named former Jefferies executive Erez Biala to form and direct a new collateralized loan obligation trading and origination platform at the fixed-income broker-dealer.

September was the busiest month for CLO issuance since mid-2015, accoriding to Thomson Reuters L

Nine global banks are testing blockchain and smart contract technologies to see if they can improve the syndicated loan market.

In October, roughly $40 billion collateralized loan obligations will become callable, giving managers with a required payment date only a month in which to refinance before the risk retention requirement kicks in.

The monthly total of $5.9 billion in new collateralized loan obligation issuance in August made slight gains over July’s output, but year-to-date issuance remains sharply off 2015’s pace.