Articles Tagged with CLOs

Adam Siegel, an ex-Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) bond trader, has plead guilty to fraud over his involvement in a multi-million dollar scheme in which he lied to customers so that they would pay higher prices for bonds. Siegel, 37, served as the co-head of RBS’s U.S. Asset-Backed Securities, Mortgage-Backed Securities and Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities Trading groups. He supervised and traded fixed income investment securities, including collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) and residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

According to prosecutors, Siegel and others lied about the asking price of sellers to buyers, as well as the price that buyers were willing to pay to sellers, while pocketing the difference. He made misrepresentations so that customers would pay higher prices while those selling bonds would end up getting deflated prices, both of which benefitted RBS.

Sometimes, he and co-conspirators would make misrepresentations to buyers by telling them that a fake third-party was selling the bonds. This allowed the firm to charge an unwarranted commission.

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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York says that Arco Capital Corp. a Cayman Islands LLC, has 20 days to replead its $37M collateralized loan obligation against Deutsche Bank AG (DB) that accuses the latter of alleged misconduct related to a 2006 CLO. According to Judge Robert Sweet, even though Arco Capital did an adequate job of alleging a domestic transaction within the Supreme Court’s decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, its claims are time-barred, per the two-year post-discovery deadline and five-year statute of repose.

Deutsche Bank had offered investors the chance to obtain debt securities linked to portfolio of merging markets investments and derivative transactions it originated. CRAFT EM CLO, which is a Cayman Islands company created by the bank, effected the transaction and gained synthetic exposure via credit default transactions. For interest payment on the notes, investors consented to risk the principal due on them according to the reference portfolio. However, if a reference obligation, which had to satisfy certain eligibly requirements, defaulted in a way that the CDS agreements government, Deutsche Bank would receive payment that would directly lower the principal due on the notes when maturity was reached.

Arco maintains that the assets that experienced credit events did not meet the criteria. It noted that Deutsche Bank wasn’t supposed to use the transaction as a repository for lending assets that were distressed, toxic, or “poorly underwritten.”

Despite the damage attributed to them during the 2008 credit market crisis, synthetic collateralized debt obligations are once again in high demand among investors. The popularity of these risky investments, with their high returns and rock-bottom interest rates, are so high that even after being denounced by investors and a lot of lawmakers back in the day, now Morgan Stanley (MS) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM ) in London are among those seeking to package these instruments.

CDOs allow investors to bet on a basket of companies’ credit worthiness. While the basic version of these instruments pool bonds and give investors an opportunity to put their money in a portion of that pool, synthetic CDOs pool the insurance-like derivatives contracts on the bonds. These latest synthetic CDOs, like their counterparts that existed during the crisis, are cut up into varying levels of returns and risks, with investors wanting the highest returns likely buying portion with the greatest risk.

Granted, synthetic CDOs do somewhat spread the risk. Yet, also can increase the financial harm significantly if companies don’t make their debt payments.

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