IMN will once again host the largest global gathering of the CLO and leveraged loans industry, May 23-24, 2018 in New York City. The 7th Annual Investors' Conference on CLOs and Leveraged Loans program will feature extensive coverage on outlook for issuance in 2018, structural and legal considerations, relative value from a research analyst and investor perspective, the role of CLOs in The default rate of US institutional leveraged loans increased from around 2% in mid-2017 to 2.5% in June 2018. Going forward, as monetary policy normalises, the floating rate feature of leveraged loans could trigger defaults by worsening borrowers' debt coverage ratios (DCRs): the ratio of net operating income to debt service costs. Leveraged lending markets have increased significantly over the past decade, driven by low interest rates and investors' search for yield. According to the May 2018 ECB Financial Stability Report and based on publicly available data, issuances of leveraged loans in the European Union amounted to just over €300 billion in 2017, in line with previous highs recorded in 2014 and 2007. that policy was set forth in the interagency statement clarifying the role of supervisory guidance issued on sept. 11, 2018 in response to the general accounting office's having determined in october 2017 that the leveraged lending guidance was a "rule" that could not take effect until submitted for review by congress (which under the … Since the European Central Bank introduced guidelines on leveraged lending last November, activity in the region has expanded. Issuance in 2018 is 17 percent ahead on the year at 70 billion The significant uptake in leveraged loan issuance levels over the pastfew years has been coupled with increasing borrower indebtedness and weakening credit and lender protection. Nonetheless, prolonged highly accommodative monetary policy and the search for yield have fostered the growth of this market. LEVERAGED FINANCE 7 The LLG laid out "guidelines" around leveraged lending, including a view that banks should not originate "non-pass" loans (in particular, loans to companies that could not demonstrate the ability to repay all their senior debt or half their total debt from base cash flows in five to seven years). Collateralized Loan Obligations, or CLOs, are a debt instrument that contain leveraged loans and are similar in concept to mortgage bonds that pool a large number of loans into a single security to provide diversification. In 2018, there was $600 billion outstanding in CLOs. At the end of 2018, 85% of leveraged loans were covenant-lite, in that they lacked traditional requirements for companies to maintain certain financial benchmarks that protect the investors who In comparison to the draft guidance (click here to view) (PDF 168 KB), the guidance makes some amendments to definitions. SME, sovereign and investment grade lending are now excluded from leveraged transactions. Even so, it makes few other concessions to banks' concerns. For example, the €5mn threshold remained unchanged. the wider economy. With these risks in mind, the ECB issued guidelines on leveraged transactions in May 2017 which set minimum supervisory expectations regarding loan origination, loan identification and the leveraged lending risk control framework for the banks under its remit. 30. In this In the first nine months of 2018, the guidelines' original limit of 6.0 times leverage was exceed