LPC - Lending Lowdown Series

Connor Fitzgerald, Portfolio Manager at Wellington Management, joins LSEG LPC’s CJ Doherty to discuss current conditions in the corporate bond market. "I think the Trump administration is in a challenging spot right now," Fitzgerald said. "While we tend to agree with some of the long term objectives that they're trying to achieve, we think the risk that the administration may be under-appreciated a little bit is that if we get too aggressive with some of our trading partners by way of tariffs that their response will be to liquidate the capital account." 

CJ Doherty sits down with David Ells, Partner and Portfolio Manager at Ares Management and Ryan Moreno, Partner and Co-head of Leveraged Finance at DLA Piper, to discuss the intersection of private credit and insurance company capital. “The first thing about being an insurance company is that everything is viewed through a lens of capital,” Ells said. “You have to allocate capital against everything that you own.”

Arek Maczka from Ropes & Gray joins host Chris Piccirillo to provide insight on debt portability provisions. Arek explains the concept of portability along with its purpose and benefits, outlines customary terms and conditions, and gives us his views on today’s market landscape and whether portable capital structures are here to stay. "Portability has become increasingly normalized over the past few years," Maczka said. "I agree that it does tend to ebb and flow, especially in the syndicated markets."

Frank Benhamou from Cheyne Capital joins host CJ Doherty to shed light on the Significant Risk Transfer (SRT) Market. "What we're seeing is an expansion both in terms of count, in terms of jurisdiction, as well as asset classes that it's being used on," Benhamou said. "So that create effectively a new opportunity."

Mustafa Adil, Head of Islamic Finance at LSEG, joins CJ Doherty to discuss the basic tenets of Islamic Financing and looks ahead to 2025. “The market has been growing substantially in the core markets in in which it operates,” said Adil. “There are 57 countries that have introduced Islamic finance regulations and where governments are actively supporting the development of Islamic finance.”

Host CJ Doherty speaks with Brian Himot, Head of Structured Capital at Strategic Value Partners, about capital solutions lending in both the US and Europe. "We think of ourselves as fitting in the space that is between traditional direct lending and private equity," said Himot. "There are a lot of opportunities that present themselves at different times through the cycle and when you have an evergreen strategy like ours, you need to have flexibility."

Host CJ Doherty sits down with Ben Radinsky, Partner at HighVista Strategies to discuss annual recurring revenue (ARR) loans and how they allow lenders to facilitate the financing of growth-stage companies. "ARR loans, what you're doing is you're trying to isolate cash flows that you actually know with high certainty will exist overtime," Radinsky said. "You can predict what that cash flow looks like in terms of ultimate profitability and because of that, you can have very tight covenants as a lender."

John Kerschner, Head of U.S. Securitized Products & Portfolio Manager at Janus Henderson Investors joins CJ Doherty to discuss the growing CLO ETF and broader securitized market. "Securitized products are issued at the short end of the yield curve between one and five years," said Kerschner. "Now that the yield curve is inverted, meaning the short end has higher yields than the long end, that makes the overall yields of securitized products look very attractive."

Alex Gorokhovskiy, Head of Direct Lending and Venture Debt at Deutsche Bank, joins host CJ Doherty to discuss current conditions in the US direct lending market and the outlook for the remainder of 2024. "There's consumer health that's ever evolving," said Gorokhovskiy. "Sponsors are now focused on making differentiated investments as opposed to paying the highest multiple for the next best asset."

The huge growth in AI applications and data consumption is driving the need for financing of digital assets. Host CJ Doherty sits down with IFR Senior Reporter Richard Leong to discuss the demand for financing in this asset class. "Private credit and insurers are stepping in to provide longer term capital to fund this tremendous amount of money needed," said Leong. "For the capital markets...just increasing use of securitization to term out loans for these players.