In the heady days of 2004-2007, before the Great Moderation came to a shuddering halt, it seemed set in stone that European investment grade CDS traded tighter than their North American counterparts. In May 2007, the Markit iTraxx Europe was trading at 20bps and the Markit CDX.NA.IG was quoted 15bps wider at 35bps. This 15bps…
U.S. CLO assets under management (AUM) climbed to $434 billion in June on the back of further new deal flow. Issuance increased to $6.6 billion (15 deals) in June from $5.4 billion (13 deals) in May. This brought first half 2016 issuance to $26.2 billion (62 deals), which is down sharply from $60.4 billion (115…
IT Remains a Favorite of PE Firms As private equity activity in the U.S. has slackened, nearly every sector has experienced a decline in overall volume of investments, barring one. Only the information technology sector is seeing a rate of PE dealmaking comparable to that of last year, with 261 closed transactions through the end…
Private Debt Industry Achieves Greater Fundraising Success in H1 2016 Although private debt fundraising in Q2 2016 has not matched the record levels seen in recent quarters, H1 2016 as a whole has seen a record proportion of funds exceed their initial target size. The period has also seen a diminishing number of funds fail…
The parlous condition of the European banking system keeps coming back to haunt the global economy, with the latest attack of lurgy coming from Brexit. The UK electorate’s vote to leave the EU has laid bare the weak credit quality of lenders, a state of affairs that needed little revealing. Markit’s iTraxx Senior Financials index,…
Improved market sentiment boost 2Q16 leveraged market; Opportunistic deals resurface The market volatility that emerged at the tail end of 2015 and seeped into 1Q16, eased in 2Q – at least until the Brexit vote – allowing lenders to step back to assess their pipelines against the back drop of a stronger high yield bond…
The decline in US private equity activity deepens US private equity activity continues to fall. Even if Q2 numbers are revised upward as time goes on, with additional datapoints backfilled, a quarter-over-quarter decline will still have occurred in the first half of 2016. As of early July, completed deal count for Q2 is more in…
Private Debt Fundraising Shows Signs of Acceleration in Q2 Preqin’s quarterly fundraising update on the private debt industry finds that Q2 showed healthy signs of acceleration, boosting hopes the industry will return to the record fundraising levels seen over the twelve month period between Q4 2014 and Q3 2015. Over the quarter, 28 vehicles… Login
Those of us who stayed up to watch the Brexit television coverage knew that in a few hours’ time the June 24 trading session would go down in history. The mainstream media were inevitably obsessing about the post-Brexit collapse in sterling, but the credit markets were focused on the Markit iTraxx indices. Big moves were…
Supported by solid technicals and a steady – if uninspired – pipeline of deals, the US loan market got a substantial boost in 2Q16 to push over US$550 billion in loan volume through the market and logging nearly US$905 billion of total issuance during the first six months of the year. Coming off a slow…