Sector developments and company hires

SME funding partnership inked
SME Capital and JPMorgan have agreed a new funding partnership dedicated to supporting UK SMEs. The collaboration entails JPMorgan extending a significant line of committed capital for SME cashflow lending over the next three years.

The partnership forms the second phase in the development of SME Capital’s warehousing programme - the first phase being the initial commitments from current investors SCIO Capital and Prytania Asset Management in March 2021. SCIO and Prytania will continue to invest in the programme and support more UK SMEs with a range of bespoke funding packages.

In other news…

CLO maturity wall considered
The looming European CLO maturity wall has prompted S&P to consider the potential adverse effects that tighter financing conditions may have on CLO credit performance and ratings going forward. Of the collateral backing EMEA CLOs that the agency rates, €8.5bn - or 7.8% of the total par balance - will mature by end-2024. A further €15.7bn and €25.9bn of underlying loans mature in 2025 and 2026 respectively.

S&P ran four scenario analyses with different levels of CLO asset defaults, trading losses, downgrades and recovery timings. Overall, CLO ratings demonstrated considerable resiliency to these additional stresses, according to the agency.

Read the full story in SCI CLO Markets.

EMEA
Due diligence and business review provider Rockstead has named John Barbour as director of operations. He was previously md of Commercial First.

North America
Greystone has appointed Thomas Wayda as an md, based in New York. He was previously svp, structured real estate finance at Meridian Capital Group, which he joined in July 2017. Before that, he worked at Starwood Capital Group, Wells Fargo and Morningstar in a variety of CMBS-related roles.