Sector developments and company hires

Mezz CLO fund closed
Pearl Diver Capital has completed the final closing of its eighth closed-end CLO investment fund, PDC Opportunities VIII, at US$400m. Launched with a target raise of US$300m, the fund hit its hard cap, with LPs represented by public pension systems, corporate pension plans, high net-worth family offices and endowments. The fund is designed to invest opportunistically in the US and European CLO space, focusing on the junior and mezzanine parts of the capital structure.

EMEA
Tim Davies has been appointed head of financial design at Blackstar Capital, a specialist structured finance and working capital solutions provider. In this newly created role at Blackstar Capital, Davies will be responsible for the design and execution of programmatic financial structures to back receivable and payable platforms. He was previously head of receivables finance at NatWest Markets and has also held the roles of md, head of origination at Demica Finance and cio of MORE Finance.

Global
Fitch has appointed Marjan van der Weijden as its new global group head of financial institutions. For three years prior to this, she was the agency’s global group head of structured finance and covered bonds. Rui Pereira replaces van der Weijden as Fitch's global group head of structured finance and covered bonds, after three years as its head of North American structured finance and covered bonds.

Redemption error
The put option notes issued by legacy Dutch RMBS E-MAC Program II - Compartment NL 2008-IV were erroneously redeemed in incorrect amounts on the July payment date. Only a redemption of the class A notes in an amount of €2.2m should have taken place, due to the occurrence of a target amortisation event. The issuer envisages correcting the undue payments on the class B, C and D notes by setting off on each quarterly payment date amounts due as interest and/or principal against the corresponding undue payment claim.

RPL RMBS hit
Moody's has downgraded the ratings of four classes and confirmed the ratings of 34 other classes issued by Towd Point Mortgage Trust from 2015 to 2019, affecting approximately US$1.7bn of securities across 22 re-performing RMBS. The impacted notes are: Towd Point Mortgage Trust 2018-2 class B1 (downgraded to Ba2 from Ba1); Towd Point Mortgage Trust 2018-5 class M2 (downgraded to Ba3 from Ba2); Towd Point Mortgage Trust 2018-6 class M2 (downgraded to Ba3 from Ba2); and Towd Point Mortgage Trust 2019-1 class M2 (downgraded to B1 from Ba3). The agency notes that the ratings of the affected tranches are sensitive to loan performance deterioration due to the coronavirus pandemic.