US Edition — What the collapse of Enviva and Inclusive means for ESG

Everybody knows that finance is a male-dominated industry, and there are plenty of initiatives to change that. But when you look at the numbers, it can be quite staggering to realize that, for example, just one in 10 senior portfolio managers in private credit is a woman.

For this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day by examining how far the industry has come in terms of gender balance — and how far it still has to go.

Join our co-hosts Shubham Saharan and Sasha Padbidri as they speak with Erika Morris, head of US CLOs at Tikehau Capital, and Nadja Marcoz, a partner at Napier Park who heads up the firm’s institutional relationships.

And if you want to read more personal stories about women in credit, and some information on how various firms are trying to advance gender equality, check out the deep dive article on this issue that we published last year.

9fin sits down with Chris Schubert, executive director in special situations at Alcentra, to talk about his expectations for the distressed market this year. 

We take a look back at restructurings he’s been involved in including Ideal Standard and lessons he’s learned from these cases. 

Schubert also goes into challenges posed by whitelists and the nuances of the German distressed market.

Who could have imagined that Red Lobster’s endless shrimp promotion might have unintended financial consequences?

Does distress at retailers like Express, Jo-Ann’s and The Children’s Place mean the US consumer is in trouble?

Is ‘liability management’ a better term than ‘credit-on-creditor violence’? And why is communications firm C Street starting a new group dedicated to it?

We answer all these questions and many more in the latest episode of our Cloud 9fin podcast. Come for the silly headline, stay to meet the leaders of our new US distressed team: Max Frumes and Rachel Butt.

In November 2023, California circumvented the US Securities and Exchange Commission and released two regulations aimed at increasing climate disclosures for US companies. The SEC initially proposed its now twice delayed climate disclosures in 2022, but the regulations are expected to be released early this year.

In this Cloud 9fin episode, host Jennifer Munnings sat down with Kristina Wyatt, former senior counsel for climate and ESG at the SEC, to take a deep dive into what the Californian regulations and the proposed SEC rules indicate for ESG in the US.

We talk about everything from the ability for US companies to remain competitive in markets that are ever more focused on sustainability, to the potential impact of the upcoming elections on ESG in the US.

Repricing deals have flooded the European market over the past few weeks, with many companies taking advantage of lower interest rate forecasts and tighter high yield credit spreads. But is this trend set to last?

For this week’s podcast, Alessandro Albano, financial journalist at 9fin, sat down with host Sammy Cole to talk about the repricing wave. We discussed examples of companies that have repriced deals recently, lender responses, and delve into Alessandro’s predictions for the year ahead.

Click here to find out more about our US CLO Database

US leveraged loan borrowers are repricing their debt at a frenetic pace, and it’s starting to hurt — in some credits, they’re testing the base limits of the CLO managers holding their debt.

Himani Trivedi, head of structured credit at Nuveen Asset Management, has seen a lot of history in the CLO market, so she’s perfectly placed to put this intense period of repricing in historical context.

How are managers coping, and what does this trend mean for syndicated loan issuance this year?

For this week’s podcast, she sat down with our US managing editor Will Caiger-Smith to talk about the repricing wave, as well as delving into captive equity funds, CLOs versus private equity and private credit, and the promise of ETF structures.

Cross-border recognition is where every good restructuring deal hopes to end. Recognition was historically a more clearcut part of a restructuring process, but in a post-Brexit world, with the advent of restructuring plans (in the UK and across Europe), and the rule in Gibbs potentially in doubt, the apple-cart may have been upset.

In this week’s podcast, Cloud 9fin sits down with 9fin senior legal consultant (and restructuring lawyer) Freddie Doust and the eminently qualified South Square barrister Riz Mokal for an (admittedly meaty) discussion on the ideas critical to the outbound recognition of English restructuring processes, and inbound recognition of US and European processes in the UK.

Strap yourself in, it's a thrilling ride!

Loan repricings came thick and fast in the US market this week, with borrowers looking to slash their borrowing costs on more than $30bn of debt — but bonds are also coming back in a big way.

Companies such as Hilton and Chobani highlighted the compelling value on offer in the high yield bond market, which could help define the shape of some hefty debt syndications that are waiting in the wings.

In this week’s episode of the podcast, our US managing editor Will Caiger-Smith and deputy editor David Bell peek under the hood of the primary markets.

German medical diagnostics provider Synlab answered investors’ Christmas wishes for another big European LBO deal by coming to market with €1.5bn in bonds and loans in early December. The funding was used to finance UK private equity fund Cinven’s acquisition of a majority stake in the company.

For our first podcast of 2024, Cloud9fin sits down with 9fin Levfin reporter Ryan Daniel and credit analyst Ameeq Singh to talk through Synlab’s rise in importance during Covid-19, it’s long lasting relationship with Cinven and their LBO debt syndication journey. The late-in-the year deal launch begs the question will there be more LBO activity to come in 2024?

The collapse of wood pellet producer Enviva last month was swift and brutal. The story’s not over yet for all of the company’s investors (for an extremely thorough analysis, check out our distressed team’s deep-dive report) but it is for at least one of them: Inclusive Capital.

Founded just a few short years ago to great fanfare, Jeff Ubben’s much-vaunted ESG activism fund closed its doors around the same time that Enviva’s capital structure fell apart. What can the implosion of these two entities tell us about the state of ESG in America?

For this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin, our US managing editor Will Caiger-Smith quizzes senior reporter Sasha Padbidri on these interlinked stories. Listen now to end the year on a cheery note.