Why Is CLO Equity Underperforming? And Can Private Credit CLOs Do Better? | Shiloh Bates (Flat Rock Global) #22

Marty Fridson (Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors) on whether US high yield is expensive near its tights.At the end of October, his fair value model put the index at 275bp against an actual spread of 344bp. CCCs had widened by almost 250bp since the end of 2025. Josef Pschorn speaks with Marty Fridson about why the long-run average spread is the wrong benchmark, as the index changes over time. The open question is whether investors hedging against a weaker economy are right about CCCs.Shownotes and analysis: ⁠https://www.fixedandfloating.com/Marty Fridson: Chief Investment Officer, Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marty-fridson-7891848X: https://x.com/MartinFridsonLehmann Livian Fridson Advisors: https://www.llfadvisors.com/Website: https://www.martinfridson.comConnect with Fixed + Floating: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/FixedFloating⁠⁠⁠ Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #highyield #creditspreads #distresseddebt

Matt King⁠ (Satori Insights) on France's sovereign risk, the hyperscaler borrowing boom and why tight credit spreads can coexist with growing risks.At recording, French five-year CDS were about 80bp and OATs were at their widest to Bunds since 2011, yet European corporate credit was still near its tights. Josef Pschorn speaks with Matt King about "The Great Deferral": borrowers that keep issuing despite higher yields, and buyers that demand more. The open question is when sovereign stress becomes a corporate credit problem.Shownotes and analysis: https://www.fixedandfloating.com/Matt King: Founder, Satori Insights. Previously Global Markets Strategist (and previously Global Head of Credit Strategy at Citi and Head of European Credit Strategy at JPMorgan.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-king-0147194/Satori Insights: https://satoriinsights.com/Connect with Fixed + Floating: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/FixedFloating⁠⁠ | Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 13.10.2026#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #sovereigndebt #hyperscalers #privatecredit #bondmarket

Shiloh Bates (Flat Rock Global) on CLO equity returns, loan repricing and private credit CLOs.CLO equity returned about −8% in 2025, on Flat Rock Global's CLO Equity Index. Defaults on 2021-vintage LBOs rose, recoveries fell to around 50 cents, and performing loans repriced tighter. Josef Pschorn speaks with Shiloh Bates about why reinvesting prepayments at a discount, the self-healing mechanism, no longer offsets those losses.Shownotes and analysis: ⁠https://www.fixedandfloating.com/Shiloh Bates: Partner and Chief Investment Officer, Flat Rock Global.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shiloh-bates-186ab28/Flat Rock Global: https://flatrockglobal.com/The CLO Investor podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnbXP4G8NDQI85q1cD--dAW6L5o0fKVWQCLO Investing (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHN94H8GConnect with Fixed + Floating: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating⁠ | ⁠https://twitter.com/FixedFloating⁠ | Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 23.09.2026#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #clo #privatecredit #leveragedloans #structuredcredit

Michael Gatto (Silver Point Capital) on what decides a lender's recovery: the credit agreement, not the default.A lender can be right about the business and still lose money. Josef Pschorn speaks with Michael Gatto about the second question a credit committee tends to skip. Not whether a borrower defaults, but what value and control leave the structure when a structure cracks.Shownotes and analysis: https://www.fixedandfloating.com/Michael Gatto: Partner and Head of Private Side Businesses, Silver Point Capital.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gatto-8a322b66/Silver Point Capital: https://www.silverpointfinance.comThe Credit Investor's Handbook: https://www.amazon.com/Credit-Investors-Handbook-Leveraged-Distressed-ebook/dp/B0CR4MMD29?ref_=ast_author_mpbMichael's latest articles: https://www.silverpointcapital.com/uploads/2026/05/47c34854a238cfef86eb78e3800da100/what-questions-should-allocators-ask-when-evaluating-direct-lending-managers.pdfhttps://www.silverpointfinance.com/images/news/pdf/What%20Can%20We%20Learn%20From%20First%20Brands%20-%20SPC%20Credit%20Lessons.pdfConnect with Fixed + Floating: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | https://twitter.com/FixedFloating | Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 10.09.2026#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #privatecredit #liabilitymanagement #directlending

Ankur Patel⁠ (Ares Credit Group) on asset-based finance for data centres, power and GPUs.A one-gigawatt data centre costs $15–20 billion to build. The GPUs and servers inside it can run $40 billion-plus, and they are the shortest-lived asset in the project. Josef Pschorn speaks with Ankur Patel about how that credit is structured so a lender is not relying on residual chip value to get repaid.Shownotes and analyis: https://www.fixedandfloating.com/⁠Ankur Patel: Partner, Ares Credit Group (Alternative Credit).LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankurjpatelcfaAres Management: https://www.aresmgmt.comConnect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedIn ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating⁠ | X ⁠https://twitter.com/FixedFloating⁠ Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 11.08.2026#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #assetbasedfinance #privatecredit #gpufinancing #datacenters #aiinfrastructure

An amend-and-extend moves the maturity and leaves the leverage where it was. A debt-for-equity swap cuts the debt and dilutes the equity. The first is routine and the second is rare, and the constraint is not legal - most of the holder base cannot take the equity or does not want it.Josef Pschorn speaks with Mike Harmon of Stanford Graduate School of Business about why out-of-court restructurings extend maturities without reducing debt, and what has to be true before a company actually deleverages.Once a company is worth less than its debt, the equity is an out-of-the-money call option, so shareholders buy time and volatility rather than repair the balance sheetWithout maintenance covenants, creditors cannot force a reduction in debtMost of the holder base does not want equity: CLOs have equity buckets, mutual funds have mandates, and only distressed funds want the positionCreditors are not one actor - a lender hedged with CDS or a par lender who has not marked down has a different payoff from a discount buyerPrivate credit changed the composition of the holder base rather than the law, which is where debt-for-equity swaps are actually getting doneThe US has liability management at one end and Chapter 11 at the other with nothing in between, while the UK, Japan, France and China all run a lighter court-supervised pathMike Harmon: Stanford Graduate School of Business. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-harmon-92b130184The Financial Restructuring Tool Set (Columbia University Press): https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-financial-restructuring-tool-set/9780231216982/Liability Management’s Limited Runway: Corporate Restructuring Today, Mark J. Roe, Vasile Rotaru - Oxford Business Law BlogConnect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | X https://twitter.com/FixedFloating Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 24.08.2026#fixedfloating #creditanalysis #liabilitymanagement #distresseddebt #restructuring #privatecredit

A fifteen-billion-dollar manager's European analyst can look at three or four situations before the rest fail his liquidity screen. Frits Lieuw-Kie-Song runs a few hundred million and can look at hundreds. This is a full walk through how a long/short credit hedge fund is actually run.Full analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/how-a-longshort-credit-hedge-fund?r=718tew&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=trueJosef Pschorn speaks with Frits Lieuw-Kie-Song ofIronshield Capital about building a market-neutral high yield book: which credits are eligible, how positions get sized, when a short earns its borrow, and where the tail hedge sits.Liability management exercises now bring the mediancompany back within roughly a year, because the fee-driven process fixes the balance sheet without fixing the business.Being in the co-op group is not the same as sitting on the committee, and Frits will pass on a situation where he cannot influence how the pie is divided.A 400 million single-bond capital structure is too small to matter for a fifteen-billion manager, which is where in-depth research still earns its keep.Position size is dictated by the downside case, with a loss budget of roughly 50 basis points of the fund per position.The tail hedge is put spreads 5 to 15% out of the money, six months out, rolled regularly, written for the event where correlation goes to one.Two worked trades: Evoke after the UK online gamingtax move, bought at a 70 LTV with a takeover catalyst, and Volta Grid during the data centre construction scare.Ironshield Capital: https://ironshieldcapital.com/Connect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | Xhttps://twitter.com/FixedFloatingFixed + Floating is for informational purposes only.Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 27.07.2026#fixedfloating #creditanalysis #highyield#longshortcredit #liabilitymanagement #europeancredit

Private credit has grown to roughly $2 trillion, but selling a single position remains a manual, bilateral process. Exiting a $25 million loan means NDAs, a data room, agent and borrower consents, and bespoke documentation — four to six weeks from decision to settlement, if a buyer is found at all.Full analysis: [INSERT SUBSTACK LINK]Josef Pschorn speaks with Alex Cordover, CEO of Tradable, about the exact mechanics of private credit secondaries — what happens between the decision to sell and settlement, and what a functioning secondary market requires.The full transfer anatomy: NDA, data room (loan tape, financials, original IC memo), non-binding IOI, consents, documentation, settlementParticipation vs assignment: in a default, participation rights typically run against the seller, not the borrowerMarks vs prices: every deal closed on Tradable has printed at par plus a buyer's premium, while valuation lag persists in software and direct-lending booksWhy trades die: information asymmetry and GPs unused to working together — not asset qualityWhere liquidity comes first: asset-backed, equipment and real estate finance before bespoke unitranche and distressed namesGuest links: https://tradable.xyz | https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-cordover-72a0a276Connect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | X https://twitter.com/FixedFloatingFixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 15.07.2026#privatecredit #privatecreditsecondaries #creditmarkets #fixedincome #assetbackedfinance

MicroStrategy’s preferred shares dropped more than 20% over a few weeks. Then an 8-K reversed the mood, handingthe company buyback authority over both its preferred and common stock for the first time. The headlines focused on a small Bitcoin sale; the more important story was buried underneath it.Full analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/stretch-is-not-cash-the-lesson-from?r=718tew&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=webJosef Pschorn speaks with Mark Palmer of Benchmark-StoneX, the first Wall Street analyst to cover Strategy, about how the company’s capital structure actually holds together and what genuinely changed.Key takeaways: The 8-K gave Strategy “two-way capital management” for the first time — the ability to buy backpreferred and common stock, not just issue new securities to buy Bitcoin. Perpetual preferred stock behaves like near-permanent capital: no maturity wall, not dilutive while outstanding, and tax-advantaged as return of capital for as long as the company posts no positive net income. The recent Stretch selloff was driven by forced deleveraging among investors who had levered the position, not by any change in the Bitcoin backing the instrument. A common misconception — that a falling Stretch price increases Strategy’s cash dividend obligation — is simply wrong; the dollar obligation is fixed regardless ofprice. Strategy’s $6.75 billion convertible debt carries a blended coupon of just 0.52%, with the real risk being the 2028–2032 maturity wall rather thaninterest expense.Guest links: https://www.benchmarkcompany.com/leaders/1601/Connect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | Xhttps://twitter.com/FixedFloatingFixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 01.07.2026

Each AI company can price itself on an internally consistent story about winning its market. Sum those stories and the implied revenues exceed any market that could exist — the big market delusion. Aswath Damodaran puts a ceiling on it: $142 trillion in global revenues last year against $20–25 trillion in employee costs, which makes the $26 trillion addressable market in SpaceX’s IPO pitch fiction. The sharper question for credit investors is who absorbs the loss when it corrects.Full analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/financing-the-big-market-delusion?r=718tew&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=trueJosef Pschorn speaks with Aswath Damodaran of NYU Stern about valuing the AI boom, the corporate life cycle, and why the credit side of the build-out carries the asymmetric risk.Key takeaways: ​The biggest loser when the delusion corrects is private credit, not equity — lenders carry the downside without the upside, and “you can’t make interest payments withpotential and promise.” ​Financing should act its age: young companies should use converts or no debt; default risk belongs in the cash flows (value the firm twice, weight by survival probability), not in an inflated discount rate. ​In distress, equity is a call and debt is a put — a passive lender in a levered company is short an option whose variance the equity holder controls.Connect with Aswath Damodaran: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ | X https://x.com/AswathDamodaranConnect with Fixed + Floating: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | Xhttps://twitter.com/FixedFloating Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice. Recorded: 15.06.2026#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #privatecredit #valuation #Damodaran