February 2021 | Issue 231
News
Mizuho outlines bold European CLO strategy
Sayed Kadiri headshot
Sayed Kadiri
Editor
Tanvi Gupta headshot
Tanvi Gupta
Head of data journalism
Mizuho is expanding into European CLOs as part of a push into leveraged finance.
According to market sources, this involves the launch of a new CLO warehouse financing business. However, officials at the bank claim that their CLO ambitions are much broader than this and involve arranging and trading CLOs.
Matt Naber, head of international acquisition finance, and Asif Godall, head of global markets emea, confirm that Mizuho has been expanding its leveraged finance capabilities in emea across its banking and securities business.
“We have a leveraged loan managed account platform, Stratum, which is doing its fourth equity raise,” London-based Godall tells Creditflux. “We have launched a CLO structuring and arranging desk, managed by Stefan Stefanov, and now have a full complement of sales and trading across high yield, leveraged loans, special situations and CLO liabilities. We aim to be a trusted partner to our borrower and investor clients in emea.”
“We have a leveraged loan managed account platform, Stratum, which is doing its fourth equity raise”
Asif Godall, Head of global markets emea | Mizuho
Godall joined Mizuho in March 2019 from Cairn Capital, where he was co-chief investment officer. He oversees sales and trading of various products in Europe and his appointment came amid a leadership shake-up at the bank. This also resulted in Stefanov joining as a European CLO specialist.
Mizuho does not yet have a European CLO arranging credit to its name, but it does have history in this market. It managed CLOs through Mizuho Investment Management before the financial crisis of 2008, but sold this business to private equity firm 3i in September 2010. That platform has moved on again and is now Investcorp Credit Management.
In the US, Mizuho built a CLO arranging desk in 2014 after hiring Jim Stehli in New York. That team arranged six CLOs last year, including two new issues.
Last year, new issue European CLO volumes hit €21.99 billion, spread across 11 arrangers. Barclays led the way on €4.3 billion for a 19.55% market share. But competition should heat up this year with Jefferies launching its own CLO business on the continent and others such as Deutsche Bank informing Creditflux last year that they had expansion plans of their own.
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Global credit funds & CLO's
February 2021
| Issue 231
Published in London & New York.
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