CLOs

CLO securities pay out interest pegged to the three-month London interbank offered rate, but loans used as collateral are increasingly switching to one-month Libor and the spread between the two benchmarks has widened significantly.

The $278.3 million RCMF 2018-FL2 also has unusually heavy exposure to apartment buildings, offices and industrial properties that are either vacant or have low occupancy levels, according to Kroll Bond Rating Agency.

The $71.7 billion-asset manager is replacing notes from a 2015-vintage CLO that had been squeezed on asset quality prior to its October 2017 post-reinvestment period.

The Dallas-based money manager has launched a UCITS that invests in both U.S. and European loans, investment-grade CLO securities, and obligations and other kinds of structured products.

The $52 billion in year-to-date volume in resets of collateralized loan obligations is nearly outpacing new-paper issuance of $53.5 billion, reports LPC.

The new notes are not being distributed proportionally across the capital stack, however; instead the refinancing will result in slightly higher subordination for the senior, triple-A-rated Class A notes.

The holdings demonstrate “resiliency over several credit cycles, with low realized principal losses and robust returns for CLO equity,” managers say.

The .. also named David Williams as head of U.S. global structured credit solutions capital markets; both executives have been with the firm for over a decade.

Changes that federal regulators are contemplating to the Volcker Rule could pave the way for CLOs to resume investing in high yield bonds, which they currently cannot do without putting themselves off limits to banks.