Fort Washington sells debut CLO; Benefit Street, Crescent Capital price; Carlson eyed

By Cristal Cody

Tupelo, Miss., Oct. 18 – October supply continues in the dollar-denominated CLO primary market with three more issuers pricing new transactions.

Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc. sold $556.17 million of notes in the manager’s first broadly syndicated CLO deal.

Benefit Street Partners LLC priced $507.75 million of notes in the manager’s second CLO offering of the year.

Also, Crescent Capital Group LP priced $406.5 million of notes in the new Atlas Senior Loan Fund XV, Ltd./Atlas Senior Loan Fund XV, LLC deal via Barclays, a source said. Final pricing details were not immediately available.

In other issuance, Carlson Capital, LP sold $337 million of notes in a partial refinancing of a vintage 2016 CLO. The manager tightened the spread on the AAA-rated tranche by 40 basis points.

“The average amount of ‘AAAsf’ spread reduction achieved when refinancing U.S. broadly syndicated loan CLOs has been relatively constant in 2019, with activity stable for the last six months,” Fitch Ratings said in a report on Friday. “The current average reduction for CLOs that refinance is 32 [bps], slightly down from 35 [bps] in 2Q19, and down from 49 [bps] in 3Q18.”

More than $34 billion of CLOs have been refinanced year to date, market sources report.

About $90 billion of new CLOs have priced this year.

Fort Washington prices

Fort Washington Investment Advisors sold $556.17 million of notes due Oct. 20, 2032 in the debut broadly syndicated Fort Washington CLO 2019-1 Ltd. transaction, according to market sources.

The CLO priced $357.5 million of class A floating-rate notes at Libor plus 142 bps in the AAA-rated tranche.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC was the placement agent.

The transaction is collateralized by broadly syndicated first-lien senior secured corporate loans.

Fort Washington Investment Advisors is a Cincinnati-based asset management firm.

Benefit Street sells CLO

Benefit Street Partners priced $507.75 million of notes due Oct. 15, 2032 in its CLO offering, according to a market source.

Benefit Street Partners CLO XVIII Ltd./Benefit Street Partners CLO XVIII LLC sold $315 million of class A floating-rate notes at Libor plus 134 bps at the top of the capital stack.

JPMorgan was the placement agent.

The transaction is backed primarily by broadly syndicated senior secured loans.

The credit investment arm of Providence Equity Partners LLC is based in New York City.

Carlson Capital AAAs tighten

Carlson Capital priced $337 million of notes due Oct. 17, 2028 in a partial refinancing of the vintage 2016 Cathedral Lake IV Ltd./Cathedral Lake IV LLC deal, according to a notice of revised proposed first supplemental indenture on Thursday.

The CLO sold $239 million of class A-R senior secured floating-rate notes at Libor plus 125 bps in the AAA-rated senior tranche.

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC was the refinancing placement agent.

Carlson CLO Advisers, LLC is the CLO manager.

In the original $404.15 million transaction issued Oct. 27, 2016, the CLO priced $239 million of class A floating-rate notes at Libor plus 165 bps.

The deal is backed primarily by broadly syndicated senior secured corporate loans.

Carlson Capital is an alternative asset management firm based in Dallas.

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