Take Notes

In our first episode back, hosts Tom Schopflocher and James Manzi discuss how COVID-19 has hampered structured finance issuance levels across the globe, leading us to trim our 2020 forecast by a quarter to $830 billion—and breaking the annual streak of $1 trillion global issuance.

Hosts Tom and Jim cover hot topics from this year's SFVegas. Matt Mitchell joins to discuss ESG, which remains a challenge in the structured finance markets due to the lack of data standardization, as well as how the importance of individual E, S, and G factors varies between issuers and investors.

Hosts Tom Schopflocher and Jim Manzi discuss our expectation of another $1 trillion-plus in issuance volume for Global Structured Finance in 2020, as well as our view of some factors that could affect the market in the coming year.

Hosts Tom Schopflocher and Jim Manzi take a deeper look at the non-QM market, which has been doubling and then some every year for the past few years. With about $20 billion+ in issuance, we explore borrower and loan characteristics, as well as what differentiates non-QM from subprime loans.

We're following up on our previous covered bonds episode with a discussion on the new flavor of environmental- and social-themed covered bonds on the rise. Our host Tom and analysts Corinne Bendersky and Adriano Rossi touch on how the capital market for these particular sustainable bonds is developing, the nature of the collateral backing these bonds, and how we measure the social impact. We also discuss how we capture green and social factors and overall ESG performance in our credit rating criteria.

ESG is everywhere lately, but how does it fit into structured finance? We've long considered ESG in our analysis, but when one of the three becomes material enough to a transaction's ability to make payments, it could be an "ESG credit factor." Ildi Szilank and Matt Mitchell join us to discuss how relevant ESG credit factors are to structured finance ratings and examples ESG-related events in the sector.

It's Take Notes' first anniversary! We head back to ABS East, where S&P Global Ratings hosted and attended a variety of panels, and cover the most-discussed topics, including whole business securitizations, the non-QM mortgage market, LIBOR, ESG, and the future of blockchain in securitization.

ABS Senior Director John Anglim joins the podcast to demystify U.S. student loans. We dive into a breakdown of the 45 million borrowers who own the $1.6 trillion+ debt burden. We then debate whether or not student loan forgiveness is a viable long-term solution, or if it's just merely a band aid for a larger systemic issue with education costs.

They use a commercial mortgage underwriting metric, but they're popping up in the residential space and are QM-exempt--so what exactly are DSCR loans? RMBS analyst Jeremy Schneider returns to Take Notes to discuss the housing, demographic, and securitization trends that suggest DSCR loans are on the rise.

Not only do investors have to master the collateral in a CLO transaction, they have to master its documentation as well. Stephen Anderberg, Tim Walsh, and Jeff Burton from the CLO team discuss the negotiations between equityholders, prospective 'AAA' noteholders, and the CLO manager--which are played out in these documents--over structuring a deal.