Company hires and sector developments

CLO firm bulks up

Adrienne Dale has joined MidOcean Credit Partners a portfolio manager for its CLO strategies. She will report to Jim Wiant, who oversees MidOcean’s existing CLO business, as the firm looks to expand and scale the business further. Most recently, Dale held senior positions in Credit Suisse Asset Management’s credit investments group, where she spent the past 14 years.

Credit vet nabbed

CBAM Partners has hired Jean-Philippe Levilain to assist in the launch of its European business. He was previously global head of loans and private debt at Axa Investment Managers.

Lender lawsuit dismissed

The US District Court for the District of Columbia has, for the second time, dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) that sought to block the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) special purpose national charter for financial technology firms (better known as the fintech charter), but the charter’s long-term survival remains uncertain due to an identical, but separate, lawsuit filed by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).

In dismissing the action, Judge Dabney Friedrich reasoned that the CSBS lacked standing because the OCC has not yet received a fintech charter application, similar to the reasoning she used when she dismissed the CSBS’ lawsuit against the OCC in May 2018. The court also noted that no event concerning the fintech charter since the prior case’s dismissal, including the OCC’s decision to begin accepting applications for fintech charters and its finalization of its fintech charter policy on 31 July, 2018, cured the original jurisdictional deficiency.  Though the CSBS’ lawsuit was dismissed, there is still active litigation concerning the fintech charter in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where the NYDFS brought a lawsuit against the OCC seeking to block the charter. On 2 May, 2019, Judge Victor Marrero ruled against the OCC’s motion for dismissal and ruled that the NYDFS’ claims against the OCC and its fintech charter are ripe for adjudication. In her opinion concerning the CSBS’ lawsuit, Judge Friedrich noted her disagreement with Judge Marrero’s decision.

P2P information call

China’s internet finance regulators last week issued a notice asking peer-to-peer lending platforms to submit credit information on all their borrowers to the country’s major credit bureaus. Moody’s notes in its latest Credit Outlook publication that the move is credit positive for Chinese ABS backed by consumer debt, as the availability of such information will allow both internet-based and traditional lenders to make better informed underwriting decisions, increasing the asset quality in structured finance deals. The regulators also encouraged financial institutions and insurance companies to take tougher action against borrowers that default on online loans, including by limiting their loans and insurance services and charging them higher interest rates for future loans – another credit positive move, according to Moody’s, since it will discourage poor credit behaviour.