Sector developments and company hires

Securitisation execs promoted in PGIM reorg
PGIM Fixed Income has reorganised its senior management team, with the appointments effective from 1 January 2022. Under the reorganisation, md John Vibert has been promoted to the newly created role of president.

Vibert joined PGIM Fixed Income in 2014 as the head of securitised products and serves in that role currently. Prior to joining the firm, he was a lead portfolio manager for BlackRock’s mortgage credit portfolios and the lead trader for its non-agency RMBS trading team. He has also held senior investment positions at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley.

Meanwhile, mds Craig Dewling and Gregory Peters have been named co-cios and will assume cio duties from Michael Lillard, head of PGIM Fixed Income. Dewling joined the firm in 1987 and currently serves as deputy cio, while Peters joined in 2014 and currently serves as head of multi-sector and strategy, as well as a senior portfolio manager for the firm’s multi-sector strategies.

Vibert, Dewling and Peters will report to Lillard, who will remain the head of PGIM Fixed Income.

Upon Vibert assuming the role of president, he will relinquish the role of head of securitised products to Gabriel Rivera and Edwin Wilches, who will become co-heads of securitised products reporting to Peters. Gary Horbacz will, in turn, become head of securitised products research, reporting to Rivera and Wilches.

Upon Dewling and Peters becoming co-cios, the deputy cio role will be eliminated. In addition to his cio duties, Peters will remain a senior portfolio manager on the multi-sector team.

CLO rating criteria updated
Fitch has updated its CLOs and corporate CDOs rating criteria, having not received any market feedback on its exposure draft during the consultation period (SCI 9 August). The rating agency has not made any changes to the proposed methodology, other than to clarify two points.

One clarification made in the updated criteria relates to the ‘margin of safety’ concept for assigning ratings at the single-B minus rating level. The criteria now indicate that a committee may consider actual portfolio modelling results a notch above single-B minus when assigning new ratings to notes at the single-B minus rating level and in such cases would not perform a stressed portfolio analysis at the single-B minus level.

The second clarification is with regard to disclosure of comparison analyses of mid-cap portfolio financial ratios in initial rating reports for notes backed by mid-cap borrowers. Neither of the clarifications has an impact on existing ratings.

Fitch continues to expect that the criteria update will result in a modestly positive impact on ratings, affecting about 4% and 30% of US and EMEA CLO ratings respectively. CLO notes rated in the double-A category may be upgraded by one notch, while single-A and lower rating categories may be upgraded by one to two notches, as a result of the proposed criteria changes. No downgrades are expected from the criteria update.

The agency expects to publish a list of ratings that may be affected by the release of this final criteria within the next week.