Cloud 9fin

When is a change in control not a change of control? That is the question some Focus Financial lenders are asking after the company managed to finance its $7bn buyout without refinancing its existing debt.

It all hinges on the wording of the credit agreement — so for this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin, Will Caiger-Smith sat down with 9fin’s debt covenant expert James Wallick to talk about this strange situation and its possible implications.

The 9fin team explores the influence of Benteler’s debut bond deal with Josh Latham. Josie Shillito guides us through the growing trend of private take-privates and Jennifer Munnings discusses the recent clarifications from the European Commission on the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

These days, private credit is becoming so popular that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a recent invention.

But some people were doing private credit before it was cool. Tim Lyne is one of those people — when he and a group of colleagues founded Antares Capital back in the nineties, the idea of a jumbo unitranche must have seemed like a pipe dream.

For this week’s episode of the Cloud 9fin podcast, our private credit editor David Brooke sat down with Tim to discuss the growth of the market, how managers are preparing for the credit cycle to turn, and where the biggest risks are right now.

9fin sits down with Ben Thompson, JP Morgan's Head of EMEA Leveraged Finance Debt Capital Markets on 24 April 2023. He gives us his insights into how the traditional debt capital markets soldiers on despite the recent banking crisis and what he sees coming in the pipeline in 2023. 

The 9fin team takes a look into Adler’s restructuring in the UK High Court with Chris Haffenden. Brian Dearing takes us through a report on 2022 covenant trends and Jennifer Munnings and Dan Power discuss insights into our ESG data and what they indicate for LevFin.

It’s kind of debt, and kind of equity. It’s been around for decades, but has recently come back into fashion.

What is it? It’s convertible debt.

Convertible bonds are a clubby and often overlooked corner of the corporate finance world. Last year, plunging equity valuations made for some notable horror stories — like Peloton, Ocado and Affirm — but in recent months the market has become popular once again.

For this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin, our US managing editor Will Caiger-Smith sat down with David Hulme of Advent Capital Management (whose president, Tracy Maitland, wrote a book on converts) to get the lowdown on the asset class’s resurgence.

Primary markets are not as simple as they used to be. How can borrowers navigate the choppy waters of today’s credit markets to manage their liabilities?

In this week’s episode of the Cloud 9fin podcast, Brian Dearing chats to Andy Hagan, Tom Richards and Gilles Teerlinck of Weil, Gotshal & Manges to get the lowdown on how companies are dealing with a challenging market backdrop.

They discuss confronting volatility, the ins and outs of equity injections, and the difficulty of executing amend-and-extends when CLOs are out of reinvestment.

Unlike liquid leveraged loans, private debt is not frequently traded (although there are signs that this might be changing) and thus can be hard to value.

But the funds that hold those private loans still have to find a way to value their books. How do they make their marks?

In this episode of our Cloud 9fin podcast, deputy editor Bill Weisbrod sits down with Brian Garfield, a managing director in Lincoln International’s valuations and opinions practice, who helps private credit funds value their holdings in illiquid debt instruments.

What’s the process for valuing an illiquid private loan? How are rising rates impacting private credit borrowers? And what does the rest of the year hold for asset performance?

9fin sits down with Boris Okuliar, portfolio manager and co-head of Global Liquid Credit in the Ares Credit Group. He gives us his opinions on the state of the market and discusses where he see value.

As Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Who knew he was predicting the policy response to the first big bank failures since the 2008 financial crisis?

Some of us at 9fin are old enough to remember the alphabet soup of rules and specially designed capital instruments that was cooked up in the wake of the GFC, to ensure that banks could melt down in an orderly fashion and without regulatory intervention. So: what on earth happened to the plan?!

In this week's episode of our Cloud 9fin podcast, editors Will Caiger-Smith and Owen Sanderson do their best to explain the fallout from the recent drama at Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse, and what it might mean for credit markets going forward.