Cloud 9fin

“9fin AI enables our users to find and process the information they need quicker. Speed is essential in financial markets and debt is no exception.”

9fin has been leveraging AI since the company was founded back in 2016, but we’ve recently stepped-up our game.

‘9fin AI’ allows subscribers to ask questions about companies within debt capital markets and receive high quality answers in real time.

For this episode of the podcast, we sat down with 9fin’s Sean Löfgren and Hannes Kindbom to talk us through the exciting new project, their thoughts on future opportunities and their stance on potential risks linked to generative AI.

Commercial real estate is in crisis — specifically, office buildings.

The pandemic unleashed an unpredictable torrent of changes in how people work and live, and the dramatic rise in interest rates over recent months has broken funding models for many property owners.

That’s extremely bad news for a lot of investors in the real estate market, but it also creates opportunities for savvy lenders. On this week’s podcast, Will Caiger-Smith asks Rich Byrne, president of Benefit Street Partners, what we can learn from the distress in CRE.

German real estate is very in vogue in distressed land. In keeping with that trend, German real estate investment firm Corestate Capital is trying to turn its ill fate around through asset sales after finally completed its debt restructuring three months ago. The restructuring deal took a whole year to push through after a lot of back and forth with its bondholders and shareholders.

The deal was implemented consensually with a large majority of its bondholders and shareholders agreeing to the deal, which involved a 78% haircut in exchange for the noteholders taking over 80% of the company. The reinstated debt was extended to mature in 2026.

However, it was not entirely straightforward. After a deal was agreed at the end of last year, the company struggled to find an auditor. It also needed to raise more bridge financing to keep afloat as the restructuring completion took longer than expected.

Corestate’s legal advisors Sven Pruefer and Hauke Sattler from Allen & Overy talk us through what landed the company in this mess, the proposals exchanged and what caused the delay in closing the deal.

On 21 April this year, the High Court sanctioned Adler Group's UK Restructuring Plan, enabling the group to pursue a solvent wind-down of operations and sale of assets over a two-year period.

But one group of creditors was pretty peeved by the plan (understatement of the century).

In this week's episode of our Cloud 9fin podcast, 9fin editor Chris Haffenden and restructuring lawyer Freddie Doust do their best to explain some of the key themes from the Adler hearing in the Court of Appeal last week and what it might mean for UK Restructuring Plans in the future.

ESG has had a rocky ride in 2023, so how is the legal sector responding?

This week, 9fin’s Head of ESG, Jack David talks with prominent sustainability-focused lawyers Sukhvir Basran from Cadwalader and Alex Smith from Eversheds about the evolving world of ESG and sustainability from a legal perspective.

We cover the US backlash, the ins and outs of sustainability-linked deals and what the future holds for the ESG within levfin and private credit.

Life insurance, on the face of it, is not the most exciting industry. The secondary market for life insurance policies, however, presents the perfect subject for a spooky Halloween special edition of Cloud 9fin.

On this week’s episode, Will Caiger-Smith quizzes Sami Vukelj — who explains how and why private credit firms are buying life insurance portfolios, and tackles some of the awkwardness involved in this morbid segment of specialty finance.

While the trade, which revolves around the ‘death benefit’ payout, leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths. On the flip side, why shouldn’t you be entitled to the cash value of your literal life while you can still spend it?

Tune in to learn everything you need to know about the death capital markets.

The new high interest rate environment poses a huge challenge for companies with debt maturing in the next two years. What risks and opportunities do investors see in the current debt market?

For this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin Bianca Boorer sits down with Mike Scott, Head of Global High Yield & Credit Opportunities at Man GLG. Scott discusses how Man GLG is navigating this new normal. Scott also goes into his team’s approach when it comes to more stressed or distressed situations.

Debt purchasers must soon decide how they plan on addressing upcoming maturity walls, but they are facing scrutiny over their business models.

For this week’s episode of our podcast, host Sammy Cole sits down with 9fin’s Nathan Mitchell and Matthew Hughes to talk through debt purchaser predicaments, their options and predictions for the years ahead.

“Our attention has been on three key players – Intrum, Lowell, and AFE. They all face similar challenges so it will be fascinating to see who emerges as the winner(s)”

Jess Larsen is in the right place at precisely the right time: after a tough period last year, investor interest in private credit is exploding once again, and his placement agency Briarcliffe Partners is perfectly positioned to benefit from this surge in popularity.

The denominator effect is easing, and LPs are once again finding room for private credit. The asset class gives investors an attractive way to benefit from higher interest rates, but its popularity is also to do with the underperformance of private equity and a proliferation of new strategies.

For this episode of the podcast, we invited Jess to the studio to talk about a rollercoaster year for private credit — and to celebrate the official launch of 9fin's new Private Credit product!

Carson Block is not an unfamiliar name, at least in the equity markets. He and his short-activism fund Muddy Waters Research have been at the center of many notable trades in recent years — so notable, in fact, that the SEC began investigating him last year.

He’s talked publicly about the covert techniques he and his colleagues use to uncover fraud, and about the impacts of short selling on his health. Amongst his successes have been some setbacks, like when Chinook was acquired by Novartis just after Muddy Waters doubled down on its short position.

But shorting credit is a different ball game, and one that doesn’t get as much visibility as public stocks.

Muddy Waters has experience in that arena too, with short bets on names like Casino and Vivion, so we wanted to know what advice Block had for debt investors trying to spot which names to stay away from. Welcome to the short seller’s guide to credit!