Take Notes: Recent Episodes
S&P Global Ratings
S&P Global Ratings’ structured finance podcast and the credit events of your day. Tune in as your hosts Jim Manzi and Tom Schopflocher explore hot topics across the structured finance and global markets.
While European Structured Finance issuance has been strong in the first half of the year, some investors believe that deteriorating macro fundamentals and geopolitical risks are not being sufficiently priced in. We touch on the evolving European investor sentiment over the last few months, the growth of private credit markets (and increasing focus on asset-based finance), and our expectations for the second half of 2025 (in overall issuance, regional growth, regulations, etc.).
Related:
- S&P Global Ratings' European Structured Finance Conference 2025
Loyalty programs have turned out to be highly profitable for airlines, as for some, they generate more cash flow than flight operations. Indeed, we believe that without a loyalty program, certain major U.S. airlines' earnings would be decidedly weaker in the current economic environment. We discuss how these loyalty programs work, their resiliency in tough times while other airline assets remain idle, how airlines generate financing from these programs by securitizing future loyalty revenue streams (and by proxy, the different types of ABS securitizations), and just how they’ve become core financial assets in general.
Related Article:
- ABS Frontiers: Airline Loyaly ABS Have Lift Off
Exchange traded funds (ETFs)--in particular, CLO ETFs--are providing a vehicle for retail investors to adapt to new financial innovations in capital markets, such as private credit (lending directly between a lender and a borrower) and tokenization (taking a real world asset and representing it as a “token” on a blockchain). While they offer access to parts of the capital markets that might have been previously inaccessible, there are risks, such as mismatched liquidity. We also look at the potential investor landscape from an Indices point of view.
Related Article:
- ABS Frontiers: How The Burgeoning CLO ETF Sector Could Impact The Broader CLO Market
Recent data regarding consumer credit--especially auto ABS collateral data--are showing signs of deteriorating performance. Moreover, we've seen some indication that consumer distress is spreading to higher credit score and income cohorts, despite a relatively low unemployment rate. An unforeseen increase in the unemployment rate over our base case could lead to further distress for consumers who are already facing a myriad of financial challenges. We deep dive into the data and detail more of our observations and what we’re attributing this to.
Related Article:
- Inflation and Affordability Challenges Remain For Consumers Despite Low Unemployment
We discuss the cross-sector impact of the Los Angeles wildfires on California's property insurance, housing finance, and state creditworthiness. As the wildfires are expected to result in substantial losses for insurers, we discuss how carriers are expected to raise rates and/or reduce coverage options in California and other at-risk areas; and how the FAIR Plan, an insurer of last resort, could exacerbate that. We also detail how the fires could cause downward pressure on home prices in California’s housing market. Finally, we discuss how the rising insurance costs and mounting affordability challenges could weigh on the creditworthiness of the state of California over time
Since CLO ETFs launched in late 2020, the investing landscape has changed, as retail investors can now access securities previously available only to institutional buyers. Driven by strong investor demand, CLO ETFs have injected new liquidity into CLO primary and secondary markets. We discuss what’s fueling the rise of the CLO ETF sector, its portfolio compositions and purchasing activities, and the extent to which these ETFs can impact CLO tranche pricing under certain economic conditions.
Related Article:
- ABS Frontiers: How The Burgeoning CLO ETF Sector Could Impact The Broader CLO Market
We’re joined by esoteric ABS credit analyst Christine Dalton to do a deep dive on the Nov. 4, 2024, downgrade of TGIF Funding LLC’s series 2017-1 class A-2. We look back at the deteriorating operating performance of TGI Friday's casual dining restaurants, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased securitization expenses following the manager transition a (manger termination event was declared on Sept. 5, 2024), potential disruption stemming from TGI Friday's Inc.'s bankruptcy filing on Nov. 2, 2024, and the virtual certainty of a payment default over the next 12 months.
After two years of muted issuance, the U.S. BSL #CLO market has roared back to life, with about $165 billion in issuance to date. We’re joined by CLO Sector Lead Stephen Anderberg to discuss what’s driving this active market (e.g., benign credit outlook and continuing strong demand for high-quality floating-rate assets), where we think the market will end up at the end of the year, and the status of refinancings and resets, specifically. Leveraged Finance Sector Lead Minesh Patel also joins us to discuss the factors driving our generally positive view of Corporate credit performance over the next 6-12 months (e.g., policy interest rate normalization to help stick a soft landing, generally healthy balance sheets, etc.).
We’re joined by analyst Casper Andersen to provide updates on the Norwegian, Finnish, and Dutch covered bonds markets, and Icelandic jurisdictional support. We discuss the current housing markets and economic growth for Norway, Finland, and Netherlands and the impact on their respective covered bond markets. We also discuss issuance demand and trends in the Dutch covered bond market and revisions to certain jurisdictional support assessments in our criteria (specifically Iceland).
Related Articles:
- Covered Bonds In New Markets: Issuance Holds Up In 2024
- Global Covered Bond Insights Q2 2024: Strong Start To The Year For Issuance
- Covered Bonds Primer
- Norwegian And Finnish Covered Bond Market Insights 2024
For our first episode in 2024, our host, Tom Schopflocher, is joined by Cian Chandler, S&P Global Ratings’ Global Structured Finance Chief Analytical Officer, to introduce our “ABS Frontiers” article series. Throughout this year, these informative commentaries will explore sectors that are somewhat “out of the ordinary,” which, in addition to being interesting and possibly not broadly understood by the market, show potential for growth in origination and securitization. Some asset classes we’ve published on so far include C-PACE, music royalties, private credit funds, and bridging loan RMBS.
In the episode, we discuss our reasons for embarking on this article series, which include providing market insight based on what we are seeing and what may come down the line.
Click on the link below to access the series:
- ABS Frontiers Series
In 2022, European covered bond issuance reached levels unseen since 2011, with the French and German markets leading the way. We're joined by analysts Denitsa Carouget and Casper Andersen to discuss both of those markets. We provide overviews of both French and German covered bond markets, including relevant legal frameworks and recent market developments. We also go into how both markets are performing in “higher-for-longer” interest rate environments and discuss our forward-looking outlooks.
Related Articles:
- French Covered Bond Market Insights 2023
- German Covered Bond Market Insights 2023
We're joined by analyst Ana Lai and co-host Jim Manzi to discuss the global office sector’s uneven recovery post-pandemic. We dive into the vacancy rates in different regions around the world, pricing trends for the office sector in a higher-for-longer" interest rate environment, and office performance in relation to the CMBS market. We also discuss distributions of North American REIT debt maturities across commercial real estate sectors, especially for the office sector, and what that means for the market. Finally, we touch on our outlook for the U.S. office market going forward.
Related Articles:
- SLIDES: Uneven Global Office Recovery Is Squeezing Credit Quality
Analysts Daniel Hu, Rebecca Mun, and Abhijit Pawar join us to discuss U.S. and European BSL CLOs. First, we give a recap of a CLO panel at a recent S&P Global Ratings-hosted European Structured Finance conference, "Navigating Challenges; Seeking Opportunities," where amendments and extensions were a focus. We then deep dive into a comparative overview of U.S. and European BSL CLOs, going into specific similarities and nuances between CLOs from both markets.
On July 28, 2023, S&P Global Ratings assigned its 'AAA (sf)' rating to the class A notes of Anyihua 2023 Phase III Personal Consumption Loan Asset Backed Securities, the first 'AAA (sf)' rating assigned by an international ratings agency to a securitization transaction in China backed by consumer finance assets.
Analyst Andrea Lin joins up to discuss the analysis that went behind rating this transaction. We also discuss our outlook for China's consumer loan ABS sector as a whole.
We're joined by credit analysts Casper Andersen to discuss how covered bonds could ease the pain in European commercial real estate (CRE), which has been struggling with inflation and rising interest rates. First, we go into the price trends of different CRE segments. We touch on covered bond rating performance. Finally, we talk about the potential for covered bond funding, which varies significantly depending on the covered bond issuer and jurisdiction, and green covered bonds, which may offer a potential source for further CRE funding.
We're joined by credit analysts Andrew South and Casper Andersen to discuss covered bonds in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Sweden has been experiencing rapidly rising consumer prices at a rate not seen in decades. Norway and Finland have been facing rising interest rates, which has had a dampening effect on property price. We talk about how the covered bond markets in all three jurisdictions have been faring under these conditions.
We're joined by credit analysts Dev Vithani, Joshua Saunders, and Maxime Pontois to discuss some of the alternative financing arrangements that are on an uptick in the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) sectors in U.S. and EMEA and how they support issuance growth. We also discuss the impact of the recent events in the banking sector on the U.S. and EMEA ABCP markets. And finally, we go into our expectations for global issuance totals for this year.
We're joined by CLO Sector Lead Stephen Anderberg and credit analyst Daniel Hu to discuss how rising U.S. broadly syndicated loan (BSL) CLO 'CCC' baskets could affect junior overcollateralization (O/C) test cushions. We detail how the mechanics of CLO O/C tests work and why the tests themselves matter. Then we deep dive into the scenario analysis we undertook to look at how the junior O/C test cushions could be affected by various hypothetical scenarios of rising 'CCC' baskets.
Related Articles:
Scenario Analysis: How Rising U.S. BSL CLO 'CCC' Baskets Could Affect Junior Overcollateralization Test Cushions
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Our host, Tom Schopflocher, is joined by Hong Kong-based lead analyst Andrea Lin to discuss our 2023 securitization outlook for China. We begin by recapping the broad Structured Finance issuance trends we are seeing in China and what’s driving them. We then go into detail on issuance trends in specific asset classes, such as RMBS, auto ABS, and consumer loan ABS.
Our host, Tom Schopflocher, is joined by U.S. RMBS Sector Lead Jeremy Schneider discuss our 2023 U.S. residential mortgage and housing outlook. With the U.S. housing and mortgage market slowdowns expected to continue in 2023, we dig into some historical perspectives that are comparable to our current economic situation for clues on how home prices may behave this year at the national and regional levels. We also discuss our issuance forecasts by subsector, our view of collateral performance, and our views on what support for investment properties might look like in the coming year, among other credit themes.
Related Articles: 2023 U.S. Residential Mortgage And Housing Outlook: Navigaing A Softening Market
Our hosts Tom Schopflocher and James Manzi get together to discuss our 2023 global structured finance outlook. Global structured finance issuance fell about 29% in 2022, and the declines were generally uniform in the largest global markets as high inflation, volatile interest rates, and geopolitical uncertainty kept issuers on the sidelines. We expect these conditions to continue to hamper issuance. Our 2023 global issuance forecast is down about 7% year-over-year.
Related Articles:
- Global Structured Finance 2023 Outlook
- 2023 Residential Mortgage And Housing Outlook: Navigating A Softening Market
- European Structured Finance Outlook 2023: Close To The Edge
- China Structured Finance Outlook 2023: Issuance Likely To Slowly Stir
- 2023 Structured Finance Outlook: Australia And New Zealand
We’re joined by Structured Finance analyst Christine Dalton, who gives her insights into the overall U.S. whole business securitization (WBS) sector, and by Corporates analyst Sarah Wyeth, who goes in depth on quick-service restaurants (which make up approximately 75% of our outstanding rated WBS transactions). We discuss some notable trends and potential credit events that we’re monitoring in the WBS sector currently and for the upcoming year.
Related Articles: U.S. Corporate Securitization Newsletter December 2022
We’re joined by our CLO team members Stephen Anderberg, Catherine Rautenkranz, William Sweatt, and Jeffrey Burton to discuss the evolving nature of U.S. CLO document provisions. A number of the recent developments in indenture provisions are geared towards increasing CLO manager flexibility, while others are responses to market and regulatory changes. We do a deep dive on these key changes and how they could potentially affect noteholders.
Related Articles: Par Wars: U.S. CLO Document Provisions Evolve To Provide Managers More Flexibility
We’re joined by nontraditional ABS Analysts Deborah Newman and Rajesh Subramanian, as well Kapil Jain from Structured Finance Methodologies, who discuss our request for comment (RFC) for proposed updates to our global aircraft ABS criteria. We review some of the proposed changes, the implications in terms of ratings impact, and the next steps in the process.
Related Article: Request For Comment - Global Aircraft ABS: Methodology And Assumptions
In this week’s episode of Take Notes, hosts Tom Schopflocher and Jim Manzi discuss their recently published chartbook: U.S. Structured Finance Snapshot: The Health Of U.S. Consumers. Topics include U.S. macroeconomic conditions, consumer ABS, housing/RMBS, and non-agency multifamily CMBS, and how the trends in asset classes reflect the health of U.S. consumers.
Related Article: U.S. Structured Finance Snapshot: The Health Of U.S. Consumers
Following the implementation of the EU Covered Bond Directive, analysts Casper Andersen and Ana Galdo join us this week to discuss the journey European covered bonds have been on to harmonize. We go over some key elements of the legislation, recap the harmonization timeline so far, and discuss what the directive means for covered bonds going forward.
Related Articles:
- European Covered Bonds Reach Harmonization Milestone As The Journey Continues, July 12, 2022
- Spanish Covered Bonds: Harmonization Achieved Through Royal Decree Law, July 13, 2022
With the European commercial real estate market facing asset price inflation risks, analyst Mathias Herzog joins us this week to discuss the region's CMBS performance. We discuss key European market trends and how they impact our ratings, noting that generally, ratings will be lower on new transactions with the same leverage as measured by the underlying assets' market value. For existing ratings, there will be no change from these developments alone. We also touch on our outlooks for certain European CMBS subsectors.
Related Article: Asset Price Risks: How Safe Is European CMBS Performance In The Face Of Rising Real Estate Values?
Credit analyst Erin Kitson joins us this week to discuss the Australian RMBS sector's likely resilience to rising interest rates in the country due to inflationary pressures. We do deep dives on a scenario analysis we performed to explore borrower sensitivity to rising interest rates, the fixed-rate phenomenon in the sector, property prices, unemployment, geographic diversity, and ratings performance.
Related Article: Monetary Tightening To Test Australian RMBS
We're joined by Chris Plumb and Jie Liang to discuss Private Equity CFOs, including the recent Astrea 7 transaction. Disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic led to temporary performance fluctuations in the outstanding Astrea transactions we rate. Rising rates and market volatility may affect returns on the underlying private equity assets in the near term.
Related Article - Presale: Astrea 7 Pte. Ltd.
Our host, Jim Manzi, is joined by U.S. CLO sector lead Stephen Anderberg, Director Daniel Hu, and research analyst Evan Gunter to do a deep dive into the history of U.S. CLO defaults. Of the 16,000+ CLO tranches that we have rated since the mid-late 1990s, there have been 50 that defaulted. We go over some notable observations and trends (e.g., rating categories, timings, etc.) in our historical data. We also discuss how we look at current tranches that are candidates for a potential default, and what a typical "path to default" might look like.
Related Article - CLO Spotlight: U.S. CLO Defaults As Of March 17, 2022
We're joined by Doug Paterson to discuss buy now, pay later (BNPL) lending, a form of consumer credit where goods and services are paid for in installments over a period typically less than 12 months, instead of being paid for in full at the time of purchase. We discuss how BNPL lending has evolved from traditional consumer financing; the market's rapid 60%-70% annual growth and the stricter regulation coming; and the regulatory and operational risks, among others, that we would consider if we were to rate a BNPL-backed securitization in Europe.
Related Article - Buy Now, Pay Later Securitizations: What Are The Risks?
Host Tom Schopflocher and S&P Global Ratings analyst Amy Martin discuss the U.S. auto loan ABS market, which roared back to life in 2021 with issuance at the highest level since 2005. Learn about vintage-specific performance trends, the relationship between unemployment and losses, loan-term trends, and more.
Related Articles:
U.S. Auto Loan ABS Tracker: Full Year And December 2021 Performance
Global Structured Finance 2022 Outlook
Expanding on our covered bond market coverage, Casper Andersen joins us to provide some insights into the growing Norwegian And Finnish markets, which are the 10th- and 14-largest in Europe, respectively. We give an overview of each market's adopted legal frameworks, key characteristics, and collateral securing their covered pools. We also give our ratings outlooks for each market.
Related Article: Norwegian And Finnish Covered Bond Market Insights 2022
Our Latin American team joins us this week to discuss the 2022 outlook for the Latin American Structured Finance market. We expect flat issuance relative to last year and stable collateral performance, continuing the trends from 2021. We go into more detail about the major regional markets and asset classes that we expect will be most active in the coming year, as well as delve into the major risk factors we identified across the market.
Related Article - Latin America Structured Finance Outlook 2022: Expectations Are For Flat Issuance And Stable Collateral Performance
We're joined by credit analysts Antonio Farina and Marta Escutia to discuss sustainable covered bond market, which has been expanding over the last couple of years. Overall, we view the lack of supply, rather than demand, is constraining further growth in sustainable issuance. We discuss in detail the different factors contributing to this lack of supply. We also discuss our outlook for the market going forward.
Host Tom Schopflocher discusses the economic factors supporting the U.S. housing market and what could happen to the record high pace of home price appreciation should they change course. Based on these factors, we carried out a statistical study to determine the likelihood of a sudden correction in home prices. We also ran a scenario analysis to understand how a sharp drop in home prices might impact ratings of certain U.S. non-agency RMBS.
Credit analyst Doug Paterson joins us this week to discuss the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) in European auto ABS transactions as the transition to EVs from internal combustion ones is expected to accelerate. We discuss some of the drivers behind the transition, price depreciation of EVs and how it affects our analysis of auto ABS deals, and our thoughts on the share of EVs in securitized pools increasing and the possibility of a "green" auto deal.
Director Jay Srivats joins our host Tom Schopflocher this week to give an update on the U.S. timeshare securitization sector. We discuss the consolidation trends in the sector this year and their impact on issuance volume, the adjustments to our base-case default assumptions in our rating analysis in response to the pandemic, and the sector's overall stable ratings performance despite pandemic-related increases in deferrals and delinquencies.
Sector Lead Casper Andersen and analyst Natalie Swiderek join us this week to give an overview of the 2021 German, Swedish, and Danish covered bond markets, the three largest in Europe. We explore some of the differences between the regional markets and deep dive into the current trends in each market.
Credit analyst Irina Penkina joins us to discuss the possible impact LIBOR replacement could have on our U.K. RMBS ratings. We deep dive into different types of scenario analysis we developed to look at the patterns in the upcoming LIBOR transition and the resulting amended terms that could trigger a negative rating action on U.K. RMBS transactions, and more.
RMBS Sector Lead Jeremy Schneider joins us this week to discuss how U.S. home prices have made significant gains recently, leading to a shift in the U.S. housing market's to being overvalued. We further discuss how the overvaluation has led us to update the home value assessments we use when evaluating mortgage pools backing certain RMBS.
We're joined by Jose Coballasi and Antonio Zellek to discuss the current state of Structured Finance in Latin America. We touch on Latin America's overall ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic; the most relevant asset classes in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico; ratings performance; and our forward-looking views on issuance in the region. We also detail Fintech's increasing role in the Latin American market.
We're joined by Matt Mitchell to discuss how Structured Finance securitizations prepare against cyber risks. We discuss how a securitization could be vulnerable to a cyberattack, the structural features that are available to mitigate and manage the cyberattack, how we account for cyber risk in our rating analysis, and how our ratings could be affected
This time, Casper Anderson joins us to discuss commercial real estate (CRE) in covered bonds. Is CRE in covered bonds worth the risk? We do a deep dive into that question by looking at the divergence of different CRE asset performances due to the pandemic, their exposures in different jurisdictions, the outlooks for CRE in Europe, and more.
Our host Tom Schopflocher is joined by analyst Casper Anderson to discuss covered bonds; this time it's the EU directive, which is now on its way to becoming law in all EU countries. The EU directive is the first real attempt at establishing a pan-European standard for covered bonds (as well as an attempt at strengthening the EU capitals market union). We discuss how the law seeks to establish that standard across the EU, some of the hold ups some countries are having in trying to enact this law, as well as some of the important legal differences that still exist between jurisdictions.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) has become even more prevalent since our last episode on the subject on Oct. 17, 2019. Kate Scanlin and Matt Mitchell join us this time to discuss our recently introduced ESG industry report cards, which help explain the influence ESG credit factors have on our credit rating analysis for specific Structured Finance sectors.
Host Tom Schopflocher speaks with credit analyst Alastair Bigley on key developments in the European RMBS market for first-quarter 2021. Performance has remained stable overall due to government support, with some deviation by country. Prepayments had started to increase again at the end of last year, but may slow as more borrowers move to fixed-rate products.
Although nonperforming loans (NPLs) are toxic, there is a market for securitizing NPLs. We're joined by analyst Fabio Alderotti this week to discuss the trends we are seeing in the southern European NPL market, and what we expect to see from that market in the future. We also deep dive into the different factors we consider in our rating analysis of NPL securitizations.
Host Tom Schopflocher is joined by Senior Director John Detweiler to discuss the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) recent confirmation of the dates for the future cessation or loss of representativeness of global London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) benchmarks. We weigh in on what the date confirmations' immediate impact could be for our ratings, and what cessation could mean overall for the Structured Finance market when it becomes effective.
Latin American Sector Lead Jose Coballasi joins host Tom Schopflocher to discuss our 2021 Latin American Structured Finance outlook. While collateral performance improved in 2020, the surge in COVID-19 cases has led to increased restrictive measures in several countries in the region, and a very challenging economic environment. Although these conditions remain headwinds going into 2021, we expect issuance to increase modestly and for most asset classes to have stable ratings performance. We discuss our view of specific sectors and regions.
Host Tom Schopflocher is joined by credit analysts Jie Liang and James Yu in a discussion about private equity collateralized fund obligations (CFOs). First, we provide a general background of what private equity CFOs are. Then, through the lens of the recent Astrea VI transaction, we discuss how we treat these types of deals in our analysis, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop.
In our first episode of the year, hosts Tom Schopflocher and James Manzi recap the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on 2020 performance, and then summarize S&P Global Ratings' 2021 outlooks and issuance forecasts for Structured Finance sectors by region.
We complete our coverage on European covered bonds with the Danish market, the largest in the world. Covered bonds analyst Casper Andersen returns with host Tom Schopflocher to provide insights into this market, including how its framework differs from others, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and ESG.
Our hosts Tom Schopflocher and James Manzi give an update on U.S. structured finance issuance. Issuance returned to form in September, reaching $54 billion, the highest monthly total so far in the year. While 2020 year-to-date issuance is still down 21% year over year, it looks like the annual total will eclipse our revised midyear forecast.
We continue with our look at local covered bond markets, this time in Sweden. Covered bonds analyst Casper Andersen returns with host Tom Schopflocher to provide insights into this relatively young but large market, including how the recently approved European Covered Bond Framework could affect liquidity risk and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Head of S&P Global Ratings EMEA Structured Finance Research Andrew South joins host Tom to recap our third annual European Structured Finance Conference. We touch on key takeaways from the conference such as what’s driving low issuance volumes, how the securitization markets have fared since COVID-19 began, and what the outlook could look like going forward.
Analysts Anne Cosgrove, Alex Gombach, and Santos Souffront join our host Tom to discuss U.S. public finance health care variable-rate demand obligations (VRDOs). We first introduce and detail what standby bond purchase agreement (SBPA)-backed VRDOs are and how we rate them. We then look at how not-for-profit health care providers can turn to this form of financing to help offset their significant operating losses and negative cash flow impacts due to COVID-19, as well as discuss our outlooks for both the health care sector and the SPBA market.
Host Tom Schopflocher talks to credit analyst Casper Andersen about the current state of German covered bonds, or Pfandbriefe. Germany has the second-largest covered bond market and the largest euro benchmark market, with outstanding issuances totaling €355 billion in 2020. German covered bonds should be able to withstand the challenges created by COVID-19, and despite little room for change, new green and social German covered bonds are spurring investor interest.
In our first episode back, hosts Tom Schopflocher and James Manzi discuss how COVID-19 has hampered structured finance issuance levels across the globe, leading us to trim our 2020 forecast by a quarter to $830 billion—and breaking the annual streak of $1 trillion global issuance.
Hosts Tom and Jim cover hot topics from this year’s SFVegas. Matt Mitchell joins to discuss ESG, which remains a challenge in the structured finance markets due to the lack of data standardization, as well as how the importance of individual E, S, and G factors varies between issuers and investors.
Hosts Tom Schopflocher and Jim Manzi discuss our expectation of another $1 trillion-plus in issuance volume for Global Structured Finance in 2020, as well as our view of some factors that could affect the market in the coming year.
Hosts Tom Schopflocher and Jim Manzi take a deeper look at the non-QM market, which has been doubling and then some every year for the past few years. With about $20 billion+ in issuance, we explore borrower and loan characteristics, as well as what differentiates non-QM from subprime loans.
We’re following up on our previous covered bonds episode with a discussion on the new flavor of environmental- and social-themed covered bonds on the rise. Our host Tom and analysts Corinne Bendersky and Adriano Rossi touch on how the capital market for these particular sustainable bonds is developing, the nature of the collateral backing these bonds, and how we measure the social impact. We also discuss how we capture green and social factors and overall ESG performance in our credit rating criteria.
ESG is everywhere lately, but how does it fit into structured finance? We’ve long considered ESG in our analysis, but when one of the three becomes material enough to a transaction’s ability to make payments, it could be an “ESG credit factor.” Ildi Szilank and Matt Mitchell join us to discuss how relevant ESG credit factors are to structured finance ratings and examples ESG-related events in the sector.
It’s Take Notes’ first anniversary! We head back to ABS East, where S&P Global Ratings hosted and attended a variety of panels, and cover the most-discussed topics, including whole business securitizations, the non-QM mortgage market, LIBOR, ESG, and the future of blockchain in securitization.
ABS Senior Director John Anglim joins the podcast to demystify U.S. student loans. We dive into a breakdown of the 45 million borrowers who own the $1.6 trillion+ debt burden. We then debate whether or not student loan forgiveness is a viable long-term solution, or if it’s just merely a band aid for a larger systemic issue with education costs.
They use a commercial mortgage underwriting metric, but they're popping up in the residential space and are QM-exempt--so what exactly are DSCR loans? RMBS analyst Jeremy Schneider returns to Take Notes to discuss the housing, demographic, and securitization trends that suggest DSCR loans are on the rise.
Not only do investors have to master the collateral in a CLO transaction, they have to master its documentation as well. Stephen Anderberg, Tim Walsh, and Jeff Burton from the CLO team discuss the negotiations between equityholders, prospective 'AAA' noteholders, and the CLO manager--which are played out in these documents--over structuring a deal.
Host Tom Schopflocher and Andy South discuss S&P Global Ratings’ second European SF conference in London, including overall market sentiment, issuance outlooks and downside risks, central bank funding schemes, and global issues like trade tensions and Brexit.
Marketplace—or P2P—lending has been taking off since the recession. Host Tom Schopflocher talks to credit analyst Doug Paterson about how this market has grown via new technologies, regulations across different jurisdictions, and our rating considerations.
We’re on the road again—this time to Australia! Host Tom Schopflocher and credit analyst Erin Kitson discuss economic conditions, the Australian mortgage market, and potential ratings implications for RMBS.
Take Notes is back and brighter than ever! We're talking solar assets, including power purchase agreements versus PACE and how financing works for different types of obligors, as well as how we rate these deals under our new methodology.
Host Tom Schopflocher and Andy South discuss AFME and IMN’s 23rd global ABS conference, touching on the key themes of regulation, especially in Europe, macro credit risk, and what first-quarter issuance trends portend for the rest of 2019.
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Hosts Tom and Jim lead a rundown of our takeaways from IMN’s recent CLO and leveraged loan conference, particularly on hot topics such as corporate credit themes, LIBOR cessation, and investor concerns, which were discussed at a roundtable “boxing ring” moderated by Brian O’Keefe.
Host Jim Manzi leads a discussion on the rising trend of co-working spaces with credit analysts Ana Lai, Jeevan Dhoot, and Senay Dawit, including the benefits (flexibility, free beer!), lease structures, and risks they could pose to CMBS and REITs.
Host Jim Manzi leads a discussion on the rising trend of co-working spaces with credit analysts Ana Lai, Jeevan Dhoot, and Senay Dawit, including the benefits (flexibility, free beer!), lease structures, and risks they could pose to CMBS and REITs.
Everything you ever wanted to know about covered bonds: what are they? How do cover pools work? Where are they issued and what’s going on in the market today? Host Tom Schopflocher discusses the asset class’ global expansion with credit analyst Antonio Farina.
It seems everyone’s in on the crypto craze, but does blockchain have a future in structured finance? Tom Schopflocher talks with director of blockchain development Tom Zakrzewski, credit analyst Tim Moran, and Vanessa Purwin from Methodologies about the potential benefits and risks of using blockchain in the securitization process through the lens of the “five pillars” used to rate SF deals.
Jim Manzi talks with CMBS analysts Mathias Herzog and Edward Twort about the deal pipeline and two of the biggest topics in the European CMBS market—Brexit and retail. We also give an update on some new guidance related to our “CMBS Global Property Evaluation” criteria.
We discuss key themes from the largest SFIG Vegas Conference to date! Our hosts’ quick takes on education finance, blockchain, LIBOR, and more.
Next stop on the conference train: CREFC. Host Jim Manzi talks leverage, lodging, retail, 2019 outlooks, and what we heard from issuers and investors at this year’s conference with CMBS analysts Jim Digney and Natalka Chevance.
It sometimes takes a company’s whole business to raise capital. In this episode of Take Notes, we dive into what whole business securitization is with an overview of this market’s advantages and disadvantages, its general performance, and the type of company that usually partakes in this type of financing. We also discuss how we analyze and rate whole business securitizations.
The 2018 ABS East Conference just wrapped up, with our analysts hosting and attending panels and discussions on every major asset class. In the inaugural episode of Take Notes, hosts Tom Schopflocher and James Manzi explore hot topics at the conference, what’s new in the market, and what we should expect as we close the book on 2018.