Cloud 9fin

Private credit is attracting plenty of new faces these days, but as we wrote in this week’s Unicrunch newsletter, a handful of household names dominate fundraising and dealmaking. Craig Packer is one of those names. Owl Rock, the direct lending firm he co-founded back in 2016, was already a power player in direct lending before it merged with Dyal Capital in 2021 to create Blue Owl; he’s now at th...

Why is Pizza Express getting into the music business? Well, these plans have been in the works for a while, and they actually make more sense than you might think. That doesn’t mean this venture is without risk — especially as the company’s margins are deteriorating, and it’s had some troublesome relations with hourly workers over the past few months. So how does PX Records, the group’s new jazz-f...

9fin’s distressed reporter Bianca Boorer travels to Milan to sit down with Bruno Cova, Partner and European co-chair of restructuring and insolvency at law firm Greenberg Traurig. Cova takes us through his illustrious career so far, from working for the Italian government, on Parmalat, Europe’s largest fraud case, to moving into private practice and working on big restructuring cases such Moby and...

Ever pulled an all-nighter to prepare a pitch, or had your weekend ruined by a last-minute fire drill from your MD? Imagine if artificial intelligence could crunch the numbers and format the slidedeck for you. What would you do with the extra free time? But also, what valuable, formative experiences might you miss out on if you could outsource rote tasks to technology? And how might that change th...

Announcing a refinancing on the day your debt matures is an unusual move — and indeed, Lycra ’s refinancing stretched some boundaries. But it’s also a great example of how not all drop-down transactions are the same. For this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin , Bianca Boorer sat down with Brian Dearing to discuss Lycra’s last minute refi of its 2023 notes. The company’s innovative variation on the infa...

When is a change in control not a change of control? That is the question some Focus Financial lenders are asking after the company managed to finance its $7bn buyout without refinancing its existing debt. It all hinges on the wording of the credit agreement — so for this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin , Will Caiger-Smith sat down with 9fin’s debt covenant expert James Wallick to talk about this str...

The 9fin team explores the influence of Benteler’s debut bond deal with Josh Latham. Josie Shillito guides us through the growing trend of private take-privates and Jennifer Munnings discusses the recent clarifications from the European Commission on the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

These days, private credit is becoming so popular that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a recent invention. But some people were doing private credit before it was cool. Tim Lyne is one of those people — when he and a group of colleagues founded Antares Capital back in the nineties, the idea of a jumbo unitranche must have seemed like a pipe dream. For this week’s episode of the Cloud 9fi...

9fin sits down with Ben Thompson, JP Morgan's Head of EMEA Leveraged Finance Debt Capital Markets on 24 April 2023. He gives us his insights into how the traditional debt capital markets soldiers on despite the recent banking crisis and what he sees coming in the pipeline in 2023. 

The 9fin team takes a look into Adler’s restructuring in the UK High Court with Chris Haffenden. Brian Dearing takes us through a report on 2022 covenant trends and Jennifer Munnings and Dan Power discuss insights into our ESG data and what they indicate for LevFin.

It’s kind of debt, and kind of equity. It’s been around for decades, but has recently come back into fashion. What is it? It’s convertible debt. Convertible bonds are a clubby and often overlooked corner of the corporate finance world. Last year, plunging equity valuations made for some notable horror stories — like Peloton , Ocado and Affirm — but in recent months the market has become popular on...

Primary markets are not as simple as they used to be. How can borrowers navigate the choppy waters of today’s credit markets to manage their liabilities? In this week’s episode of the Cloud 9fin podcast, Brian Dearing chats to Andy Hagan, Tom Richards and Gilles Teerlinck of Weil, Gotshal & Manges to get the lowdown on how companies are dealing with a challenging market backdrop. They discuss...

Unlike liquid leveraged loans, private debt is not frequently traded (although there are signs that this might be changing) and thus can be hard to value. But the funds that hold those private loans still have to find a way to value their books. How do they make their marks? In this episode of our Cloud 9fin podcast, deputy editor Bill Weisbrod sits down with Brian Garfield, a managing director in...

9fin sits down with Boris Okuliar, portfolio manager and co-head of Global Liquid Credit in the Ares Credit Group. He gives us his opinions on the state of the market and discusses where he see value.

As Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Who knew he was predicting the policy response to the first big bank failures since the 2008 financial crisis? Some of us at 9fin are old enough to remember the alphabet soup of rules and specially designed capital instruments that was cooked up in the wake of the GFC, to ensure that banks could melt down in an order...

Katharine Hidalgo sits down with two debt advisers from Alvarez & Marsal to discuss what they foresee for the market. Tim Metzgen, Managing Director and EMEA Head of Debt Advisory and Senior Director Tom Paterson give us some insight into how borrowers are managing a more challenging environment and what lenders are asking for in 2023.

Everyone knows interest rates are higher than they were last year. No-one can say for sure where they’ll be this time next year, but people have a fairly good idea. Given those expectations, it’s no surprise that some brokerage companies are using rate-related adjustments to boost their EBITDA. But is there a way these adjustments could go awry? This week, Will Caiger-Smith and Emily Fasold dig in...

The 9fin editorial team ask where are the deals? Securitisation reporter and acting levfin editor Owen Sanderson discusses CLO trends in 2023 and demand for new issuance.

The US auto lending industry is a finance juggernaut, but not all auto loans are made equal. In this episode of Cloud 9fin, Will Caiger-Smith sits down with reporter William Hoffman to dig into two of the high yield market's best known subprime auto lenders. What does the future have in store for these companies as consumer credit quality teeters on the brink of a downturn?

The 9fin team takes a look into Ceconomy and its oversold risks with Emmet McNally. Brian Dearing gives us a preview into a report on 2022 covenant trends and Tom Hudson discusses the pitfalls and obstacles his engineering team faced when building 9fin's ESG company database.

...but in the end, does it even really matter? Leveraged loan investors are railing against suboptimal credit-spread adjustments as borrowers transition their coupons away from Libor to SOFR. Some of them are even considering legal action. Do they have a case? Will Caiger-Smith and David Bell dive into the niche administrative issue that suddenly became a new battleground in leveraged credit.

Katharine Hidalgo sits down with Stuart Brinkworth to discuss private credit's latest trends. We discuss documentation, the impact of rising interest costs on businesses and what to expect from 2023. Brinkworth is Mayer Brown's head of Leveraged Finance in Europe and a partner in the Banking & Finance practice of the London office. 

It's our first US episode of 2023, and January is off to a flying start — at least for the high yield bond market. But what about loans, where bankers are still stuck with billions of hung bridge debt and private credit continues to eat up would-be syndicated supply? Will Caiger-Smith dials up deputy editor David Bell to decode the year so far.

The 9fin editorial team discusses trends they expect to see in 2023 in the leveraged finance, restructuring and CLO spaces.

The holidays are upon us, but sanctions never sleep. This week, 9fin's Bianca Boorer has been in court covering Veon's creative use of UK restructuring law to pay down its Russian bondholders and cut ties with VimpleCom, its Moscow subsidiary. She explains this complex transaction for Will Caiger-Smith.