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Amid the recent market rout, check out this latest rankings report to see how managers stack up based on asset prices as of 4 April 2025.

Amid the recent market rout, check out this latest rankings report to see how managers stack up based on asset prices as of April 4, 2025.

While this piece is no longer as timely given the recent market rout, it still offers some noteworthy insights.

Weakness in the loan market has led to a broad-based widening of discount margins across the U.S. CLO capital structure. Lower mezzanine tranches have shown the greatest sensitivity to spread movements, reflecting their structurally leveraged exposure to underlying credit risk. In contrast, senior tranches (AAA/AA) and the single-A tranche exhibit a beta of less than 1.0 to loan market movements, indicating more moderate spread volatility in response to changes in collateral spreads.

As anticipated, weakness in the loan market results in a broad-based widening of discount margins across the CLO capital structure, with lower mezzanine tranches exhibiting the highest spread sensitivity — reflecting their structurally leveraged exposure to underlying credit risk. By contrast, senior tranches (AAA/AA) typically display a beta of less than 1.0 to loan market movements, indicating more muted spread volatility in response to changes in collateral spreads.

Some of the larger managers in the top quartile include OHA, BSP, Allstate, BlackRock, Golub, and Oaktree.

Seven EU CLO managers with smaller platforms performed strongly, with most of their deals ranking in the top quintile.

Notably, EU CLO equity NAV metrics surpass those of their US BSL CLO counterparts across all vintages except for 2022 and 2023 deals, despite the latter having considerably more diversified underlying portfolios. In particular, the equity NAV metrics of EU CLOs from the 2013–2014 and 2018 vintages are markedly higher than those of their US counterparts.

This article focuses on US BSL CLO deals that exited their reinvestment period (RP) in 2023, based on a sample of 386 deals. As shown in the table below, the median annualised prepayment rate was 20% in year 1, with a wide range—from 12% to 27%—based on the 25th and 75th percentiles. In year 2, the median annualised prepayment rate rose to 34%, while the interquartile range narrowed compared to year 1.

As these deals exited their reinvestment periods in 2022—a year marked by significant volatility—27 out of 67 managers sustained average single-digit annualised prepayment rates across their deals in the first year post-RP, as shown in the table below.

Cairn CLO X equity recently traded with a released cover price of EUR 46.3, equating to a primary equity IRR of 13.7%. Its strong performance was largely driven by a solid annual distribution of over 18% sustained over more than six years.

The table below lists the outstanding EU CLO deals that have already met their IRR incentive fee thresholds of 12%, supported by robust equity distributions. As expected, most of these deals were issued in 2016 or earlier, and all but one were reset—effectively extending the life of the deal and enabling equity distributions sufficient to meet the IRR thresholds. Collectively, the total incentive fees distributed to date amount to approximately EUR 24 million.

A sample of 1,437 US BSL CLO deals (vintage 2013–2023) is included in this study. Deals with a collateral pool...

The table below presents the annualised post-reinvestment period prepayment rates for each of the 239 seasoned EU CLO deals across the first, second, third, and fourth years. Notably, 18 deals have recorded single-digit annualised prepayment rates in the first, second, and third years post-reinvestment period.

Notably, Redding Ridge achieved an impressive feat by pricing three resets on the same day—Friday, 21 March 2025. The last time a manager accomplished something similar was Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), with three reissues in mid-2018, and Alcentra, with three refinancings in early 2021.