The secondary market has continued to climb as the combined impact of robust demand for paper and the lack of sufficient net new deal flow puts upward pressure on loan bids. Steady CLO issuance and money entering retail funds have provided the impetus on the demand side. Month to date CLO issuance is at $7.1…

Lender Survey: Are you seeing cracks in your portfolio?  Yes, we are seeing signs of cracks in credit quality in our portfolios, said roughly  35% of the attendees gathered at the Marriott in Times Square for Thomson Reuters LPC’s 22nd Annual Loan & CLO Conference on Thursday.  While these respondents said some companies are falling…

Nearly half of U.S. CLOs see weighted average bids on underlying assets climb to 97 or higher  The upward trend seen in secondary loan bids is mirrored when tracking all the assets held by CLOs in LPC’s Collateral database. Through mid-February, bids on loans held by CLOS had been grinding down in line with other…

Issuers largely continue to win out on flex, but investors are pushing back on riskier credits Similar to previous months, flex activity in August continued along the path of being mostly a borrower friendly market. Thomson Reuters LPC’s Flex Factor scored -0.6 in August, the fifth straight month in issuer friendly land. The Flex Factor…

HY E&P Trailing 12-month default rate surpasses 31% There was $5.2 billion of U.S. high yield bond default volume in July, pushing the trailing 12-month (TTM) rate to 5.1% from 4.9% at the end of June, according to Fitch Ratings. Halcon Resources Corp.’s long-awaited bankruptcy comprised… Subscribe to Read MoreAlready a member? Log in here...

Fed Survey: 10% of banks reported tightening terms The majority of banks surveyed reported little change in the last three months with only one domestic bank reporting easing terms to larger firms, according to the latest Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey. This is down from 13%… Subscribe to Read MoreAlready a member? Log

Flex activity continued to favor issuers in July Market sentiment in July was more of the same in the leveraged institutional market. Although deal flow thinned out from a swell of volume in June, negotiations continued to favor issuers. Thomson Reuters LPC’s Flex Factor scored a -0.04 for July,… Subscribe to Read MoreAlready a member?

The PE-backed LBO market continued to remain inflated and aggressive in 2Q16. The average purchase price multiple on large corporate LBO deals was elevated at 11.3 times while middle market deals also saw lofty valuations at 9.7 times. Historically middle market LBOs exhibited average purchase price multiples closer to… Subscribe to Read MoreAlready a member?

The spectacular turnaround in sentiment in the leveraged market resulted in a 137% jump in refinancing activity in the second quarter, reaching US$112bn, up from US$47bn in the first quarter and the highest since 2Q15’s US$165bn. With cash build-up from repayments, investors who had been sitting on the sidelines in the early part of the…

U.S. CLO assets under management (AUM) climbed to $434 billion in June on the back of further new deal flow. Issuance increased to $6.6 billion (15 deals) in June from $5.4 billion (13 deals) in May. This brought first half 2016 issuance to $26.2 billion (62 deals), which is down sharply from $60.4 billion (115…