Cloud 9fin

“9fin AI enables our users to find and process the information they need quicker. Speed is essential in financial markets and debt is no exception.” 9fin has been leveraging AI since the company was founded back in 2016, but we’ve recently stepped-up our game. ‘9fin AI’ allows subscribers to ask questions about companies within debt capital markets and receive high quality answers in real time. Fo...

Commercial real estate is in crisis — specifically, office buildings. The pandemic unleashed an unpredictable torrent of changes in how people work and live, and the dramatic rise in interest rates over recent months has broken funding models for many property owners. That’s extremely bad news for a lot of investors in the real estate market, but it also creates opportunities for savvy lenders. On...

German real estate is very in vogue in distressed land. In keeping with that trend, German real estate investment firm Corestate Capital is trying to turn its ill fate around through asset sales after finally completed its debt restructuring three months ago. The restructuring deal took a whole year to push through after a lot of back and forth with its bondholders and shareholders. The deal was i...

On 21 April this year, the High Court sanctioned Adler Group's UK Restructuring Plan, enabling the group to pursue a solvent wind-down of operations and sale of assets over a two-year period. But one group of creditors was pretty peeved by the plan (understatement of the century). In this week's episode of our Cloud 9fin podcast, 9fin  editor Chris Haffenden and restructuring lawyer Freddie Doust...

ESG has had a rocky ride in 2023, so how is the legal sector responding? This week, 9fin ’s Head of ESG, Jack David talks with prominent sustainability-focused lawyers Sukhvir Basran from Cadwalader and Alex Smith from Eversheds about the evolving world of ESG and sustainability from a legal perspective. We cover the US backlash, the ins and outs of sustainability-linked deals and what the future...

Life insurance, on the face of it, is not the most exciting industry. The secondary market for life insurance policies, however, presents the perfect subject for a spooky Halloween special edition of Cloud 9fin . On this week’s episode, Will Caiger-Smith quizzes Sami Vukelj — who explains how and why private credit firms are buying life insurance portfolios, and tackles some of the awkwardness inv...

The new high interest rate environment poses a huge challenge for companies with debt maturing in the next two years. What risks and opportunities do investors see in the current debt market? For this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin Bianca Boorer sits down with Mike Scott, Head of Global High Yield & Credit Opportunities at Man GLG. Scott discusses how Man GLG is navigating this new normal. Scott...

Debt purchasers must soon decide how they plan on addressing upcoming maturity walls, but they are facing scrutiny over their business models. For this week’s episode of our podcast, host Sammy Cole sits down with 9fin ’s Nathan Mitchell and Matthew Hughes to talk through debt purchaser predicaments, their options and predictions for the years ahead. “Our attention has been on three key players –...

Jess Larsen is in the right place at precisely the right time: after a tough period last year, investor interest in private credit is exploding once again, and his placement agency Briarcliffe Partners is perfectly positioned to benefit from this surge in popularity. The denominator effect is easing, and LPs are once again finding room for private credit . The asset class gives investors an attrac...

Carson Block is not an unfamiliar name, at least in the equity markets. He and his short-activism fund Muddy Waters Research have been at the center of many notable trades in recent years — so notable, in fact, that the SEC began investigating him last year. He’s talked publicly about the covert techniques he and his colleagues use to uncover fraud, and about the impacts of short selling on his he...

When JP Morgan priced Ivy Hill XXI in July it marked the bank's entry into middle-market CLO arranging and underlined the expansion of the mid-market CLO industry. That deal also re-sparked the inevitable question of whether now is the right time for private credit CLOs in Europe. For this week’s episode of our podcast, Josie Shillito quizzes Christine Ferris, head of JP Morgan's global CLO primar...

Can banks really compete with the big guns of private credit? Many are trying — but there are multiple constraints holding them back, from regulation all the way through to organizational structure and culture. This is just one of the topics we discussed in our podcast with Eric Muller of Oak Hill Advisors , a seasoned veteran not just of the direct lending market but also of the banking industry....

Lenders tend to feel reassured knowing their docs have a J Crew blocker, but not all J Crew blockers offer the protection they might expect. For this week’s episode of our podcast, Alice Holian and Olivia Mantock cover the ins and outs of J Crew blockers and run through some novel formulations they’ve seen in 2023. Is the ‘Dechra standard’ going to take off? Or will blockers become increasingly li...

It’s been a hot and heavy summer, and the pipeline is looking encouragingly full for next month — especially compared to this time last year. For this week’s episode of the podcast, Will Caiger-Smith and William Hoffman take a tour through the primary calendar and evaluate each deal’s chances for a smooth syndication. Featuring: Worldpay , Vistra , Syneos Health , Simon & Schuster …and many mo...

ESG investing has come under increased scrutiny for its ability to effect change in recent months, following the controversial Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation in Europe and rising political pushback against the movement in the US. For this week’s episode of the podcast, our host Jennifer Munnings sat down with Rupert Davies, a sustainable finance specialist with over eight years of exper...

Casino operator Penn Entertainment is betting that a $2bn partnership with ESPN will supercharge the company’s foray into the online sports wagering market. It could be an expensive gamble: online sportsbooks have been a hotspot of growth in the US gambling industry, but competitors such as DraftKings and FanDuel are already starting to pivot to profitability from a “growth by any means” mentality...

German wire and cables manufacturer Leoni is in the process of implementing its restructuring plan, approved by the Nurembourg court under the new German bankruptcy regime StaRUG. It is the first big test of the new framework, which proved useful for cramming down dissenting minority shareholders and getting an agreement in place with several stakeholders in time to save the group from insolvency....

Sometimes it feels like the next wave of distress in the debt markets is always two quarters away. What if it’s already here — less of a tsunami and more of a gradual rise in the sea level? Chris Wright runs the private markets group at Crescent Capital , and has plenty of experience as a junior capital provider to stressed credits. As we reported this week , tapping third parties for instruments...

Recent developments in the German Real Estate industry have attracted significant attention due to controversial governance and questionable transactions, which were further exacerbated by a series of short-seller attacks. However, are these factors solely responsible for their bonds trading at distressed levels and the equity at a considerable discount to book value? For this week’s podcast, Chri...

Credit ratings are one of the foundations of modern credit markets — and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners wants in on the action. Several months ago, the regulatory association announced plans to adjust the capital charges for insurance companies investing in CLO debt and equity, by developing an in-house rating methodology instead of relying on the big three agencies. The plans...

Will Thames Water’s overflowing £14bn debt pile lead to its downfall? Or should everyone pipe down? Bianca Boorer sits down with Owen Sanderson to discuss the media storm around Thames Water over the last two weeks, dispelling misguided views on its liquidity while going through potential obstacles down the stream.

The infamous J.Crew maneuver was a bombshell, setting a blueprint for contentious liability management deals and sparking a wave of efforts to block such maneuvers. Now, some direct lenders are worried they've found a way around those blockers. As we wrote earlier this week, securitization baskets in some credit agreements could be loose enough to allow borrowers to securitize assets like intellec...

Thanks to rising scrutiny from investors, ESG is no longer just a second thought in private credit dealmaking. It’s now a must-have. Private funds are using a variety of methods to integrate ESG considerations into their decision-making: for this week’s episode, our host Sammy Cole sat down with Cassandra Fahy, a managing director at Pemberton Asset Management, to discuss some of them. How has the...

The end of Libor is a little over a week away, and some US corporate borrowers are still racing to switch their floating rate loans to SOFR ahead of the 30 June deadline. The loan market’s transition away from the old reference rate has been slow, but increasingly contentious in recent months. Borrowers, lenders and financial sponsors have tussled over the compensation offered to loan investors to...

Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget (SBB) has had a tough couple of months, after losing its investment grade rating and with some bondholders now arguing the company has breached a key covenant under its bond documentation. For this week’s episode of Cloud9fin, Bianca Boorer sits down with Hazik Siddiqui and David Orbay-Graves to look into the Swedish real estate firm’s recent accounting revisions, ways it c...