Asset-Backed Securities

Since we published our October 2019 whitepaper, ‘ESG and ABS at TwentyFour’, the global ESG market has continued to grow dramatically. We have seen a Green ABS market begin to emerge, improvements in sustainable data and an increasing focus on ESG in the leveraged loan and CLO markets. But what does all this mean for investors?

While rising interest rates are generally positive news for European ABS due to the resulting increase in their floating rate coupons, the substantial volatility in UK government bonds recently has seen ABS spreads widen, we believe due in large part to the popularity of the asset class with pension funds as a liquid fixed income allocation alternative.

With private equity firms active buyers of CLOs and CMBS in recent weeks, Aza Teeuwen explains why these investors are shunning physical assets in favour of asset-backed bonds.

TwentyFour Partner and Portfolio Manager, Douglas Charleston, explains how ABS markets have performed in Q3 2022 and provides his outlook for the rest of the year.

With the higher rated tranches of euro CLOs popular with UK pension funds, Aza Teeuwen looks at how the market coped with heavy selling in recent days and notes investment grade CLO bonds are now yielding close to 10%.

With UK banks pulling mortgages from the market, Douglas Charleston explains why this doesn’t reflect any fundamental weakness in the UK banking sector, but rather the uncertainty created by the sharp moves in UK rates.

Demand for floating rate assets has driven a strong reopening of the European ABS primary market, and is drawing new investors to the asset class, says Kevin Law.

How has ESG in the ABS market changed over the last year? Pauline Quirin talks through some of the positive development she's seen and the main challenges facing the ABS market.

European ABS issuers largely held off on printing new deals in Q2 as broader market volatility saw spreads widen, but we are already seeing more investor-friendly structures and many favoured names are likely to bring deals offering markedly higher yields when activity picks up again.

Douglas Charleston looks at the development of the European ABS market in the second quarter of 2022 and explains what this could mean for investors going forward.

With yields on B rated CLO bonds now as high as 18%, Elena Rinaldi looks at various scenarios for corporate default rates and questions why investors are overshooting even the most pessimistic scenarios.

European ABS and CLOs had a turbulent Q2 as broader macro headwinds sparked heavy selling, but investors have made good use of direct trading to pick up bonds at prices not seen since Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.