KBRA Releases Research – U.S. CLO Manager Style Comparisons

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--KBRA releases research that examines the different strategies adopted by U.S. collateralized loan obligation (CLO) managers. An individual CLO manager’s style or approach to investing in a pool of leveraged loans can vary compared to peers.

In this report, KBRA examines cross-metric comparisons that could offer insight on potential strategies employed across the market. We focus on some of the differences between CLO managers when evaluated across different cross-metric comparisons. KBRA made some simplified assumptions around the various CLO metric pairings and quadrants under which any given CLO manager’s transactions are classified. The governing classifications used in this report are Opportunistic and Conservative. However, these classifications are not intended to imply any positive or negative sentiment. Rather they are being utilized for information purposes to display and distribute the data. The manner in which the comparisons were constructed is analogous to that used to produce KBRA’s European CLO manager style comparisons, with certain adjustments made to narrow the scope of the analysis given the larger size of the U.S. CLO manager universe.

Key Takeaways

• KBRA’s cross-metric comparisons reveal a range of potential CLO manager styles. Using various pairings of CLO performance metrics, a particular CLO manager platform can be assessed on where it may fall on the spectrum of conservative versus opportunistic approaches to portfolio management.
• Managerial styles can vary from very opportunistic (with a large majority of cross-metric comparisons indicating an opportunistic approach) to the more conservative (with a large majority of cross-metric comparisons falling below the market average).
• Individual top 10 metric tables detailing CLO manager performance.

Click here to view the report.

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• European CLO Manager Style Comparisons: September 2022 Update

About KBRA

KBRA is a full-service credit rating agency registered in the U.S., the EU, and the UK, and is designated to provide structured finance ratings in Canada. KBRA’s ratings can be used by investors for regulatory capital purposes in multiple jurisdictions.