Sector developments and company hires

Early redemption for Spanish synthetic

Clifford Chance has advised Santander Consumer Finance regarding the early redemption of bonds issued by Santander Consumer Spain Synthetic Auto 2018-1 and the settlement process. This transaction included obtaining consent from various institutional investors and represents the first early redemption of a synthetic securitisation fund in Spain.

The Clifford Chance team was led by global financial markets partner José Manuel Cuenca, with the support of senior associate Leonardo Fernández and associate Virginia Jiménez from the firm’s Madrid offices. Tim Cleary, global financial markets partner in London, advised on English law issues.

In other news…

EMEA

AXA IM has announced the latest stage of its development with the creation of several new devolved business lines. The new business line organisation structure will include the lines of real estate, infrastructure, alternative credit, natural capital & impact investments, and Chorus. The new devolved business lines will be supported by Client Group Alts, in charge of investors’ relations, and will aim to empower the leadership team to meet clients’ needs and drive the growth of the business. The latest evolution of AXA IM Alts, which organises the firm’s existing internal platforms into five dedicated businesses, marks the rapid growth of its business following its formation in March 2020. AXA IM Alts will continue to be led by global head, Isabelle Scemama, and deputy head, Deborah Shire.

Miguel Tolda has joined BNP Paribas as a director, based in London. He is a member of the real estate and non-performing loans team within the bank’s securitised products group. Tolda was previously a vp at Morgan Stanley and has also worked at Credit Suisse and Societe Generale in securitisation-related roles.

Debitos is set to launch a new pan-European loan servicer database aiming to connect investors and banks directly with servicers. Known as Servicing Navigator, the database will allow investors and banks to find their best-suited business partners, and will filter by jurisdiction, asset class, loan type, status, and by licenses. Going forward, Debitos hopes to extend market coverage of the Servicing Navigator with servicers registered on the platform, as well as capture new entrants to the market as it continues to expand across Europe.

European DataWarehouse has upgraded the capabilities of its reporting tool for its securitisation repository platform, EDITOR. The recent overhaul responds to EDW’s initiative to incentivise the exercise of uploading structured data and transaction-level data to a securitisation repository. EDITOR NextGen will give issuers insights into their data upon upload, with instant benchmarking and deal reporting, which can be redistributed internally or to investors, for free. With the updates, EDW aims to empower issuers with these deeper insights, ultimately boosting the worth of reporting for both public and private securitisations. The updates will also feature a redesign in favour of user experience and will also highlight data quality scoring by displaying a given deal’s ECB or ESMA score - dependent on templates used. Additionally, the firm is also expanding the capabilities of its CSV2XML Convertor to streamline the preparation and submission of XML data files by allowing for new custom mapping solutions.

Nuveen has announced the expansion of its private credit specialist team with the hire of Nick ap Simon, to the position of md and private credit specialist. Simon, who joined the firm in August from Cross Ocean Partners - where he most recently served as head of EMEA marketing - brings expertise in private credit, direct lending, and structured credit across Europe and the Middle East to his new role. Additionally, Simon brings business development experience across multiple alternative markets, which includes private debt, private equity, real estate, and infrastructure. He will maintain responsibility for leading and developing the firm’s private credit specialist team which will focus on building lending opportunities and enhancing the team’s external relationships, reporting to Nuveen’s head of EMEA and APAC institutional, Simon England Brammer.

North America

Fannie Mae’s ninth CAS REMIC of the year - CAS 2022-R09 - priced on 21 September. The deal consists of an A3/A-rated $292.585m M1 tranche priced at SOFR plus 250bp, a Baa3/BBB-rated $250.785m M2 tranche priced at SOFR plus 475bp and a small $47.6m B1 tranche rated Ba3/BB priced at SOFR plus 675bp. The joint bookrunners are Citi and Wells Fargo. Co-managers are Amherst Pierpoint, Barclays, Bank of America and Performance Trust Capital. It references a pool of 96,000 mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $29.3bn. It is a high LTV pool, with LTV values of between 80% and 97%, acquired in 4Q21. In keeping with the trend of the last few months, this is a considerably smaller CAS trade than was common at the beginning of the year.

Freddie Mac is in the market with STACR DNA 2022-07, a $616m REMIC and the GSE’s seventh CRT deal of the year. The reference pool consists of 69, low LTV single family mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $20bn. The loans were originated after 1 February 2021 and securitized before February 28 2021. There are four tranches, rated A, BBB+, BBB and BBB-.

Morgan Lewis has promoted Lena Surilov and Milan Wozniak to partner, based respectively in its Boston and Chicago offices. Surilov represents financial institutions on complex finance transactions, including asset-based and cashflow financing. Wozniak concentrates his practice in the areas of securitisation and structured finance, including auto ABS and single-family rental securitisations.

PTSB loan sale inked

Permanent TSB has agreed the sale of a portfolio of predominately performing buy-to-let loans, to be funded by way of a securitisation via Glenbeigh 4 Seller. The newly incorporated entity is intended to be funded by funds managed by PIMCO and arranged by Citi. The proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including the completion of the Ulster Bank transaction (SCI 9 November 2021).

The transaction involves the sale of a pool of circa 5,170 BTL loan accounts secured on around 6,195 properties. The loan accounts are linked to about 4,915 borrowing relationships.  

The portfolio has a gross balance sheet value of circa €770m, a net book value of circa €700m and an overall risk weight intensity of circa 65%. Approximately 86% of the portfolio is on a tracker product, 12% on a variable product and the remainder is on a fixed rate product.

The loans in the portfolio will continue to be serviced by PTSB for a period of up to six months, after which legal title and loan account servicing will transfer to Pepper Finance Corporation (Ireland).