GlobalCapital’s Innovation Awards are meant to honour the players and firms that are taking the market to new places. This year, the award for the Most Innovative Securitization Bank of the Year went to Guggenheim — which showed itself to be the leader in structuring and arranging a huge variety of deal types, many of them esoteric or non-traditional in nature. The bank’s pitch made it clear that it is deeply committed to broadening the horizons of the securitization market to include issuers and cash flows that may not have been previously considered for capital markets execution.
Of the 17 asset classes that the bank worked on in 2018, 12 could be characterized as ‘off the run’. In terms of total volume, Guggenheim arranged 33 transactions totalling $9.31bn last year. Its whole business securitization franchise was a standout, with the bank arranging five deals in this asset class.
Guggenheim’s securitization of the Planet Fitness gym franchise was a strong example of its work in whole-business securitization. The deal marked the first time the company had tapped the capital markets, using the proceeds of the securitization to refinance $708m of term loan debt and for general corporate purposes that included returning capital to shareholders. The deal was priced at 140bp over swaps for the $575m four year tranche and 180bp over swaps for the pari-passu seven year class.