Securitization Polls and Awards

Moody’s has been collecting data on the structured finance market for almost 30 years. Today, Moody’s Analytics (sister company of credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service) offers go-to platforms for the structured finance market and is continually developing new technology to organise and broadcast that deep data set. This has long been recognised by structured finance investors, where it has a strong client base. But over the course of 2019, the company expanded its issuer business with the purchase of the Deloitte ABS Suite software system. It has also taken great strides in enabling its data to be fed into investment bank client portals through hosted APIs, and delivering content in a modular way through i-frames. Its embedded presence across all sides of the CLO markets explains why it came top of the GlobalCapital poll for securitization technology provider of the year.

Since inception in 2014, Guggenheim’s structured finance franchise has demonstrated a strong commitment to broadening the reach of securitization and capital markets financing to new issuers and new asset classes. The team, led by industry veteran Cory Wishengrad, is stocked with senior structured finance talent hired from firms up and down Wall Street. In six years, Guggenheim Securities has brought an astounding 65 new issuers to market and introduced 19 new asset classes. That track record continued in 2019 and secured the firm’s spot as GlobalCapital’s Best Securitization Bank of the Year.

The spectre of the transition from Libor to Sofr has loomed over the market for several years with many technical issues still being worked out. Many in the market feel that the whole issue will end up in court, with judges being asked to decide the one fundamental question of who will end up paying for it. Against that backdrop, it takes a brave and committed issuer to step up to the plate and very publicly do a deal that breaks that log jam. For Freddie Mac, it was market leadership of the very highest order.

Dechert’s US CMBS practice stands out for the breadth of work it does, its range of clients and its cutting-edge regulatory work. This culminated in leading market shares in terms of volumes and values of deals, including being the number one counsel on deals in the CRE CLO space in 2019.

Running a successful securitization trustee business is all about balancing the need to sustain high levels of service, while building and maintaining scale by investing in the business. It is a difficult juggling act at the best of times, but in years of exceptionally strong volume, such as 2019, it marks the best from the rest.

2019 was a year of huge growth for the structured finance team at Morgan Lewis. With that growth, and the strong interplay of the structured finance practice with other practice areas of the firm, Morgan Lewis was able to work on some of the most interesting esoteric ABS deals of the year. The number of lawyers working in the structured finance practice grew from 45 to 60 between mid-2018 and 2020. The bulk of the new additions arrived in 2019, when seven new lawyers joined the practice in Washington, D.C, and four joined in both New York and Chicago.

GlobalCapital is pleased to present the winners of its annual US Securitization Awards.

In the GlobalCapital poll for our 2019 US Securitization Awards, Golub Capital with Morgan Stanley as arranger of the Golub CLO 45(M) deal nabbed 28% of the votes, taking first place among the four deals nominated. Golub Capital has a 15-year track record of managing CLOs and has been the leading middle market CLO issuer by volume for each of the last seven years, according to Creditflux data. This is Golub Capital’s seventh award in the past seven years for recognition in the CLO space.

GlobalCapital is pleased to announce the winners of its annual European Securitization Awards