Company hires and sector developments

Derivatives continuity
The US CFTC and the Bank of England have issued a joint statement aimed at reassuring market participants of the continuity of derivatives trading and clearing activities between the UK and US, after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The measures that will be in place by end-March include: information-sharing and cooperation arrangements to support the effective cross-border oversight of derivatives markets and participants and to promote market orderliness, confidence and financial stability; and the extension of existing CFTC relief and comparability for the UK, as well as UK equivalence for the US.

EMEA hire
Intertrust has appointed Amit Taylor as head of corporate services in Guernsey and a member of the firm’s new Guernsey senior management team. Taylor has over 20 years’ experience as a finance industry professional in the UK and Guernsey. He was previously Guernsey md of Estera, following stints at Trust Corporation and HSBC’s fund administration and custody business on the island.

Manager ranking shake-up
Moody’s CLO manager league tables saw a significant shake-up among US managers in 2H18, in terms of both deal count and AUM. CIFC took over the top spot from GSO/Blackstone in terms of CLO AUM with US$15.6bn and was tied with MJX, GSO/Blackstone and Carlyle in terms of highest deal count at 25. The biggest mover among the top 10 US CLO managers was MJX, which moved to third place from seventh in AUM at US$14.2bn, behind CIFC and GSO/Blackstone (US$15.4m). Finally, PGIM and THL joined the top 10 with 20 and 19 deals respectively. The other managers in the top 10 by deal count are Octagon (22), Ares (21), Och-Ziff (20) and Sound Point (19), and by AUM are Carlyle (US$13.4m), Octagon (US$12.8m), Ares (US$12.6m), CSAM (US$12.4m), Sound Point (US$11.7m), PGIM (US$10.9m) and Och-Ziff (US$10.5m). Meanwhile, GSO/Blackstone, Carlyle and PGIM remained the top three managers by AUM (€7.3bn, €6.5bn and €6.1bn respectively) and deal count (17, 15 and 14 respectively) in Moody’s European rankings, albeit with PGIM taking over the second spot in both rankings from Carlyle.

North America hire
Global Debt Registry has promoted its product director Patrick Dietz to head of product strategy, responsible for leading the development of new products and features across the firm to create new market efficiencies. The new products will complement ePledge, the GDR’s management tool for collateral pledge risk. Christine Stern has been hired to manage and develop the ePledge offering, bringing experience in delivering innovative new products dealing with loan-level data from her previous positions at Orchard Platform and Caliber Home Loans. GDR launched its distributed ledger platform based on the IBM Blockchain last year (SCI 29 June 2018) and now has over one million registered assets across its platform, including consumer, small business and student loans.

Whole business ratings cut
S&P has lowered its ratings on TGIF Funding series 2017-1 notes to double-B plus from triple-B minus and removed them from credit watch with negative implications. Since the close of the transaction in March 2017, the number of stores within the securitisation has decreased by 28 units and TGI Fridays has demonstrated nine consecutive quarters of negative same-store sales (SSS). While some of the other casual dining and quick service restaurant transactions rated triple-B minus by S&P have demonstrated intermittent negative SSS over the same period, most also had positive growth periods. TGIF Funding’s DSCR declined to 1.99x in December 2018 from 2.18x at close. The first cash-trapping trigger occurs at 1.75x, which causes a 50% cash trap before funds are released to the issuer.