Julie Miecamp opens the episode by framing the CLO market after a difficult 2025, noting that the pressure on CLO equity was less about credit losses and defaults and more about arbitrage compression, asset repricing, and liabilities that could not adjust as quickly. She then introduces guest interviewer Hugh Minch and his conversation with Ian Gilbertson of Invesco (00:02:09), which begins with the macro risks shaping leveraged credit today, including AI disruption, software-sector stress, geopolitical volatility, consumer pressure, and the question of whether the market still has the same shock absorbers it had during the 2022–2023 rate-hiking cycle (00:02:24).

Hugh and Ian then move into CLO issuance, pricing, resets, and refinancing activity (00:07:44), before discussing manager tiering and the shift toward larger, more diversified books (00:12:07). Ian explains why CLO equity had a difficult 2025 (00:16:17), emphasizing arbitrage compression over crystallized credit losses, then unpacks the captive equity debate (00:20:10), the growth of CLO ETFs and what they mean for liquidity and market structure (00:23:49), and the misconceptions that still come up in investor education. The episode closes with Ian’s outlook for the rest of 2026 (00:30:43), what institutional investors should ask CLO managers (00:31:33), and a rapid-fire round on credit discipline, ratings, career advice, and making decisions with imperfect information (00:32:27)

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Hosted by Julie Miecamp