Securitization Awards

If there was ever a year when the confidence and insight of a first-rate accounting firm was particularly needed, it was 2020. Facing stiff competition from its peers, Deloitte’s depth and breadth of experience and expertise in structured finance was called on and recognised by the market as Accounting Firm of the Year across multiple sectors.

Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) has always had a culture of intellectual curiosity. Since its foundation in 2011, the search for new challenges and frontiers has led the firm to all corners of securitization. From areas as disparate as single-family rental and commercial real estate NPLs to marketplace lending and solar. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the firm is active across a wide array of structured finance areas, including ABS consumer lending, CMBS, MBS, and CLOs, as well as esoterics such as aviation, and whole business securitizations.

We had an abundance of excellent candidates for this award. Yet in a year when the pandemic dominated markets, we wanted to recognise a transaction that not only showed structural flair, creativity and capital markets excellence in solving a problem for a client, but which successfully navigated extremely challenging market conditions at the same time. Congratulations to Fannie Mae and to structuring lead Nomura for Connecticut Avenue Securities-Seasoned B Transaction.

There’s a saying that once is luck, twice is coincidence, and three times is a pattern. While we don’t wish to become the in-house newspaper of Guggenheim Securities, once again, following victories in 2019 and 2020, the firm has exceeded our expectations when it comes to the depth, breadth and quality of its securitization activities, and for that reason, we have chosen to award it Esoteric ABS Bank of the Year.

Analysts have long viewed point of sale (POS) as a potential new frontier for the consumer ABS sector. In July 2020, with concern over the pandemic’s long-term economic impact still rife, Affirm crossed that frontier with a deal that left no doubts about investor confidence.

Global Jet Capital spent many years in meeting after meeting and conference after conference explaining to investors a simple truth - that business aviation is its own market entirely. In 2020, the message hit home. The commercial sector remained in disarray even after lockdowns ended. Business jet travel bounded back sharply. Commercial aviation ABS investors were exposed to firms whose very existence was in doubt. Business aviation ABS investors were exposed to wealthy individuals and successful firms in an array of different industries. At the height of the pandemic while commercial ABS hit collateral triggers, Global Jet Capital hit the primary market with a transaction the market overwhelmingly voted ABS deal of the year.

GlobalCapital is delighted to reveal the winners of its 2021 US Securitization Awards, where we seek to recognize the most notable and innovative deals, banks and market participants of 2020. The vast majority of awards were voted on by the market, from shortlists compiled by GlobalCapital’s editorial team. In compiling the shortlists, we took feedback from the market through a survey, and in direct discussions, studied league tables, submissions and other data. Then, we picked out lists of credible winners for each category, all of which would have been richly deserving of an award.

RMBS deals of the year are often innovative in one form or another. But they typically only boast one or perhaps two fresh features. Investors looking at the Nomura-led Cascade Funding Mortgage Trust 2020-AB1 had to use both hands to count the structural innovations. The $285.8m reverse mortgage transaction from Waterfall Asset Management was the clear winner in 2020, impressing investors, analysts and other issuers with its groundbreaking structure.

Many CLO managers went into 2020 aggressively positioned, with a high percentage of portfolio assets rated triple-C and on the cusp. When the pandemic hit, a wave of downgrades drove these same managers into bouts of forced selling and severely limited purchases of new assets. But not GoldenTree Asset Management.

Waterfall Asset Management is one of the largest structured product-focused alternative investment managers by assets under management. It is a testament to the firm’s skill, dedication, and innovation that this year it won awards both as issuer – RMBS deal of the year – and as hedge fund investor of the year. Waterfall manages approximately $9.5bn of assets across a variety of co-mingled funds, funds-of-one, separately managed accounts, a publicly-traded REIT, and a private equity fund.