CLOs

Last week marked another record-breaking year for the securitisation industry as over 5,500 market participants gathered in Barcelona for the annual Global ABS conference, surpassing last year’s attendance and reflecting the growing momentum across both public asset-backed securities (ABS) and private asset-backed finance (ABF) markets.

Markets settled down last week thanks to the absence of headlines around tariffs. There is a universal acceptance that uncertainty and volatility will remain, though a series of constructive data prints relating to inflation and labour markets have now been navigated, and investors are shifting their focus to how central banks will weigh up the growth and inflationary impact of tariffs at the next round of meetings.

Last week we wrote about a notable shift in market sentiment and how this had impacted our view of relative value within fixed income. So, where has the impact been felt, and has it changed our view on relative value?

It has been two weeks since the primary market for collateralised loan obligations (CLOs) re-opened and 2025 has already proven to be quite a year from multiple angles.

Last week, members of TwentyFour’s asset-backed securities (ABS) portfolio management team were in Dana Point, California for the Opal Group CLO Summit, an annual event with over 2,000 participants made up of investors, bankers, CLO managers, service providers and lawyers.

The start of the school year ordinarily also marks the end of summer for the primary bond markets as issuance restarts, though this year feels rather different.

Headlines have painted a nervous picture of the health of consumers across Europe. Simultaneously, rating agencies have upgraded their outlook on the same consumer assets to neutral. The short story is that, although there has been a mild weakening in performance metrics, the consumer has held up well and is ahead of our base case expectations in almost all areas.

A consumer loan ABS issued last week by Consors Finanz, a fully-owned subsidiary of BNP Personal Finance, highlights the remarkable appetite investors are currently showing for mezzanine ABS bonds.

Having been the best performing asset class across fixed income in 2023, collateralised loan obligations (CLOs) have spent the first half of this year on similar form with record levels of issuance meeting equally strong demand from a broadening range of investors.

The European asset-backed securities (ABS) market saw a record issuance last week with €5bn of primary issuance.

Following an incredible 2023, collateralised loan obligation (CLO) investors are again having a great year with the asset class outperforming the more traditional asset classes.

After delivering a stunning 2023, collateralised loan obligations (CLOs) were once again one of the top performers in Q1. That leaves us with the question, where do we go from here?