Company hires and sector developments

CLO hire

Geoffrey Horton has joined Barclays as vp, CLO and loan strategist in London. He was previously a CLO and commercial ABS research associate at Wells Fargo in the US.

Italian auto firms fined

The Italian Competition and Markets Authority (Autorità Garante delle Concorrenza e del Mercato or the ICA) recently fined nine captive auto finance companies a total of over €678m for distorting the Italian auto finance market. DBRS believes the recent actions by the ICA should not materially affect Italian auto ABS transactions. However, DBRS notes that there could be an increase in prepayments as borrowers look to terminate early with improved competition. Nevertheless, the effects of prepayments on individual transactions may differ depending on specific structural features. DBRS believes the ICA’s auto fines will have a neutral credit impact on existing Italian structured finance transactions but it may create more competition in the market. The nine companies implicated are as follows: Banque PSA Finance, Banca PSA Italia (the captive finance companies of PSA Peugeot Citroën), BMW Bank GmbH (the finance arm of BMW AG), FCA Bank (a joint venture of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. and Credit Agricole Consumer Finance ), FCE Bank Plc (Ford Motor Company), Opel Finance (formerly General Motors Financial Italia), RCI Banque S.A. (Renault), Toyota Financial Services (Toyota Motor Corporation) and Volkswagen Bank (Volkswagen AG).