Sector developments and company hires

Revolver exposures on offer
Goldman Sachs is in the market with a balance sheet synthetic securitisation referencing a portfolio of predominantly investment-grade senior unsecured revolving loan facilities. Dubbed Goldman Sachs Bank USA credit-linked notes due 2025, the transaction comprises two classes of S&P-rated CLNs for a total of US$184.8m.

The transaction documentation links the ability of Goldman Sachs to receive protection payments on the referenced obligations depending on the performance of the same cash exposure it holds on its own or its affiliates' balance sheets. This feature limits the bank’s ability to be net-short on these reference obligations, as it would not receive protection payments unless it holds a cash long position, according to S&P.

“In our view, this transaction is akin to a reference obligation-only transaction, whereby the default likelihood and the recovery characteristics mirror those of the underlying obligations. Consequently, while executed synthetically, this transaction bears more resemblance to a CLO than to a synthetic CDO structure,” the agency notes.

In other news…

Bank acquisition agreed
Supply@MECapital (SYME) has entered into a strategic agreement with a European alternative investment firm and its co-investors - 1AF2 and The AvantGarde Group - to acquire a bank in Europe. The objective of the transaction is to support and facilitate the rapid growth of the Supply@ME platform, with the full support of the central bank within that jurisdiction.

As part of the agreement, Supply@ME will give the bank pre-emption rights to invest in each securitisation note issue and other funding programmes, to support the platform as it grows. In return, the bank will provide up to €8bn of funding over five years, to support inventory funding across all of SYME's international operations.

The AIF has committed to recapitalise the bank immediately following the completion of the central bank's regulatory banking authorisation process.

Cross-border credit card ABS prepped
NewDay has announced a UK credit card ABS from its Partnership Funding master trust via BofA, BNP Paribas, Santander and SMBC Nikko, breaking its two-year issuance streak from the NewDay Funding trust. In a first for the programme, NewDay Partnership Funding 2020-1 comprises a dollar-denominated class A1 tranche.

In total, the class A tranche includes £139m of protected orders, while protected orders account for two-thirds of the class B and Cs and a third of the class Ds. The deal is expected to price early next week.

New CMU Action Plan unveiled
The European Commission has unveiled a new Capital Markets Union Action Plan. Under the plan, the Commission commits to 16 new actions to achieve three key objectives: support a green, digital, inclusive and resilient economic recovery by making financing more accessible to European companies; make the EU a safer place for individuals to save and invest long-term; and integrate national capital markets into a genuine single market. One of these actions is to support the provision of credit to European companies - in particular SMEs - through an improved securitisation market.

North America
Brean Capital has formed Brean Real Estate Solutions (BRES), a commercial real estate special servicing platform to serve the CMBS, real estate structured products, non-performing loan and real estate owned (REO) marketplace. Industry veterans Julie Madnick, Henry Bieber and Linda Sanchez have all joined the firm as mds reporting to Christopher Tognola, head of Brean real estate debt strategies.

Bieber has additionally been named head of BRES special servicing and surveillance, while Sanchez becomes head of BRES operations. The former was previously head of loan servicing at 3650 REIT and the latter was previously head of special servicing operations at SitusAMC. Madnick was previously a portfolio manager and strategy head for CMBS at Ares Management. 

BRES is actively engaged in obtaining special servicer ratings and anticipates being rated by year-end.

Toorak Capital Partners has appointed Carole Mortensen and Ketan Parekh as mds. The former has additionally been named head of credit and the latter head of business development and capital markets. Mortensen was previously managing principal at M1 Strategic Advisors, while Parekh joins Toorak from Invictus Capital Partners, where he served as md and led the firm’s business-purpose loan operations.