CLO manager acquired

THL Credit Advisors has acquired the collateral management business of Kramer Van Kirk Credit Strategies, which currently manages seven CLOs totaling approximately US$3.4bn of assets. THL Credit currently manages 15 CLOs, including the recently priced THL Credit Wind River 2018-1. The acquisition would bring THL Credit's CLO assets under management to approximately US$12bn and the firm's total AUM to over US$15.5bn. The closing of the transaction is expected during the summer, upon receipt of certain required consents.

Digital loan registry launched

Global Debt Registry has launched a loan registry designed to verify and provide transparency on loan data on the cloud-based IBM blockchain platform. All loan-level collateral positions and verification activity will now be immutably recorded on the decentralised registry with highly secure permissioning and access controls to provide new levels of efficiency to the ABS market. By bringing this marketplace to a distributed ledger environment, the aim is to optimise market processes by reducing the need for middlemen, as well as provide a higher level of transparency among issuers and auditors. The registry has more than 700,000 loans registered to date, across multiple credit facilities, primarily focused on digital lending.

Europe

Kartesia has appointed Sharif Anbar-Colas as portfolio manager for structured credit, based in London. He was previously md and head of European CLO/CDO trading at Jefferies and before that traded ABS and CLOs at Cohen & Co, UBS and Bear Stearns.

Värde Partners has hired Shannon Gallagher as head of EMEA business development and investor relations, based in London. Gallagher has over 15 years of experience working with institutional investors to achieve their investment objectives. She previously led the EMEA client development team at Magnetar Capital and, prior to that, was a principal at Park Hill Group.

The EIF is looking to hire a structured finance analyst/associate. They will be expected to contribute to the appraisal of securitisation transactions, through data analysis, review of transaction documentation and monitoring of the deal portfolio. They will report to the head of the securitisation division, who then in turn reports to the head of equity investments and guarantees department.

Global promotion

Alcentra has promoted Vijay Rajguru to global cio, effective 2 July this year, from his position of global co-cio which he has held since joining the firm in September. The promotion follows Paul Hatfield’s decision to retire from Alcentra at the end of this year, although he leaves the role of co-cio as of 29 June this year. Previously, Rajguru worked for GoldenTree Asset Management, where he was a partner, having joined the firm in 2007.

Leopalace investigation underway

Construction issues may affect the cashflow and value of the properties securing the Leopard Two Funding, L-MAP One Funding and ORIX APL Trust 2010-1 securitisations, according to Fitch. A recent investigation has found that 38 properties developed by Leopalace 21 Corp - the builder and manager of the three transactions' underlying properties - between 1996 and 2009 were not compliant with plans and may not satisfy Japan’s Building Standards Act, as the parting walls in the celling spaces were not constructed or insufficiently constructed. The company plans to investigate all 37,853 properties it built by June 2019 and complete repair work by October 2019. Fitch believes that it is essential for Leopalace to complete its investigation and repair work, as announced, to minimise vacancy risk – although the agency does not expect the transactions' ratings to be affected in the near term, since performance to date has been strong.

Non-QM partnership agreed

Starwood Property Trust and Impac Mortgage Holdings have entered into a strategic relationship to collaborate on the origination and securitisation of non-qualified mortgage loans. Under the agreement, Starwood will purchase up to US$600m of non-QM loans over the next 12 months that meet its investment criteria, while Impac will retain the right to co-invest - along with Starwood - in future Starwood-sponsored securitisations that contain non-QM loans originated by Impac. Starwood is working on an initial non-QM RMBS that will be 100% backed by Impac collateral, in which Impac expects to co-invest. 

North America

Ryan McNaughton has joined King & Spalding’s corporate, finance and investments practice group as counsel in the New York office. McNaughton focuses on structured finance and specialty leveraged finance matters and will broaden the firm’s esoteric securitisation practice into several new asset classes. He was previously counsel at Paul Weiss. 

Morningstar has promoted Becky Cao to a new role overseeing the quality of the agency’ securitised product ratings and Michael Brawer and Brian Vonderhorst are to split a job following coo, Joe Petro’s departure. Brawer inherits the coo title and Vonderhost will be newly created head of sales and business development. Cao and Brawer will enter into their new roles 2 July while Vonderhorst has already begun in his new position.

Real estate programme launched

A new commercial real estate lending platform called Starz Real Estate has launched to provide middle-market loans - sized at €10m-€50m, with loan-to-value ratios of up to 75% - across Europe to borrowers for properties that have historically been underserved by traditional bank lenders. Starz is led by David Arzi (who previously led Marathon Asset Management’s US real estate lending business and European CRE business) as ceo, Heather Jones (who was previously coo of Deutsche Bank’s European CRE lending platform) as coo and Limor Shilo (formerly director of debt origination for Deutsche Bank’s European CRE lending platform) as head of loan origination. The platform is sponsored by Sightway Capital, a Two Sigma company focused on private equity investments.

RFC on purchased receivables

The EBA has launched a public consultation on draft regulatory technical standards specifying the conditions to allow institutions to calculate capital requirements of the securitised exposures (KIRB) in accordance with the purchased receivables approach laid down in the amended CRR. The draft RTS specify the conditions under which institutions may use the provisions on purchased receivables to make them fully workable in the context of securitisation transactions, including a general approach to the relationship between the IRB rules on purchased receivables and the SEC-IRBA framework, as well as eligibility conditions to compute KIRB. The consultation runs until 19 September 2018, with a public hearing on the RTS scheduled for 4 September 2018 at the EBA premises. 

Securitisation programme extended

Arrow Electrics has amended its securitisation programme, extending maturity to June 2021 from its original date of September 2019 and increasing capacity to US$1.2bn, from US$910m. The programme is led by Bank of America as administrative agent and Mizuho Bank as structuring agent.

Supervisory structure changed

China has set up a new supervisory structure whereby leasing companies that were previously regulated by the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) are now supervised by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC). The new regulatory framework will likely lead to more stringent regulation of leasing companies that were previously supervised by MOFCOM. Before the change, leasing companies were regulated by either the CBIRC as nonbank financial institutions or MOFCOM as corporations. More leasing ABS may be issued through the Credit Asset Securitisation (CAS) scheme. The new supervisory structure may, in the long run, result in a greater proportion of Chinese leasing ABS deals being issued under the CAS scheme.