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The Borrowing Base in Private Securitisations Explained - and Why It Matters

The Borrowing Base in Private Securitisations Explained - and Why It Matters

From Jet Engines to Nuclear Dreams – Rolls-Royce’s Next Frontier

From Jet Engines to Nuclear Dreams – Rolls-Royce’s Next Frontier

Arbitrage vs Balance-Sheet CLOs – Same Vehicle, Different Destination

Arbitrage vs Balance-Sheet CLOs – Same Vehicle, Different Destination

If you’ve ever wondered how two transactions can look identical on paper yet serve totally different purposes, welcome to the curious world of the collateralised loan obligation (CLO). Whether it’s chasing yield or trimming regulatory fat, every CLO has a motive. The trick lies in spotting which one

How Bonds Change Hands – Inside the UK’s Secondary Debt Market

How Bonds Change Hands – Inside the UK’s Secondary Debt Market

Not so long ago, if you wanted to buy or sell a bond, you picked up the phone, whispered a few numbers, and hoped the other side didn’t hang up. These days, the market hums digitally – faster, cleaner, quieter. But while the method has changed, the money, as ever,

Beyond Belief – How Beyond Meat’s Shares Cooked Themselves

Beyond Belief – How Beyond Meat’s Shares Cooked Themselves

There are some weeks when the stock market behaves like a sensible adult. Other weeks, it behaves like it’s been left unsupervised with an energy drink on tap. Beyond Meat just gave us one of those: its shares shot up more than 600% in three days before promptly collapsing

The Role of Creditors’ Committees in UK Restructurings

The Role of Creditors’ Committees in UK Restructurings

When a company slides into insolvency or restructuring, creditors suddenly find themselves in a maze of procedures, professional fees and briskly worded emails – all at a pace that leaves little room for those actually owed the money. That’s where the creditors’ committee comes in: a statutory panel designed to

Tax Gross-Up Clauses: How Payments Stay Whole When Tax Gets Involved

Tax Gross-Up Clauses: How Payments Stay Whole When Tax Gets Involved

If there’s one thing guaranteed to ruin a perfectly good payment, it’s tax. That’s why clever lawyers came up with the tax gross-up clause – a built-in promise that the payee won’t lose out just because the taxman’s feeling peckish. The Problem It Solves Imagine you’

Robinhood and JP Morgan: Britain’s Battle of the Investment Apps

Robinhood and JP Morgan: Britain’s Battle of the Investment Apps

Nutmeg, once the friendly face of online investing, is bowing out this autumn and giving way to J.P. Morgan Personal Investing – a rebrand that says the grown-ups have arrived. But the timing is no coincidence. As JP Morgan puts its name over Britain’s best-known investing platform, another American

STS or Not? A 90-Second Reality Check for Securitisations

STS or Not? A 90-Second Reality Check for Securitisations

Servicing in Securitisation – What Happens When the Cash Stops Flowing

Servicing in Securitisation – What Happens When the Cash Stops Flowing

By now, you’ve probably come to expect a metaphor whenever we talk about structured finance – and rightly so. We can’t resist finding one. But this time, it fits rather neatly. If a securitisation were an orchestra, the servicer would be the percussion section: steady, precise, and often overlooked.

OpenAI’s $1 Trillion IOU

OpenAI’s $1 Trillion IOU

Over the past few weeks, headlines have reported that OpenAI has entered a trillion-dollar partnership with NVIDIA, AMD and Oracle – a number so big it sounds more like a typo than a transaction. Cue a mix of excitement and head-scratching. How can a company that still loses money afford something

Understanding the Warehouse Phase in CLOs

Understanding the Warehouse Phase in CLOs

If a Collateralised Loan Obligation (CLO) were a play, the warehouse phase would be the dress rehearsal – essential, chaotic, and occasionally panic inducing. It’s the part nobody sees – the bit that stops opening night collapsing in chaos. We’ve mentioned warehouses before in Cash Flow CLOs and Launching a

Tokenised Securities in the UK: Law, Ledgers and Legal Lag

Fintech & Innovation

Tokenised Securities in the UK: Law, Ledgers and Legal Lag

There’s a corner of finance that’s quietly trying to drag centuries-old law into the digital age. It’s called tokenisation, and depending on who you ask, it’s either the future of capital markets or a very clever way to make record-keeping sound exciting. In simple terms, it

EA’s Power Play – The Deal That Changed the Game

EA’s Power Play – The Deal That Changed the Game

What do The Sims, FIFA (sorry, EA Sports FC) and Jared Kushner have in common? Apparently, a $55 billion leveraged buyout. Yes, you read that correctly. Electronic Arts – the California gaming powerhouse behind some of the world’s most popular digital franchises – is going private in a $55 billion deal.

When Loans Go Rogue – How Investors Read the Risk in Securitisations

When Loans Go Rogue – How Investors Read the Risk in Securitisations

If you’ve ever wondered what keeps structured credit analysts awake at night, it isn’t the copious cups of coffee they’ve downed that day – it’s two deceptively dull numbers that decide whether a deal sinks or swims. The first is default frequency – how often the borrowers behind

EMIR and UK EMIR: Same Rules, Different Accents

EMIR and UK EMIR: Same Rules, Different Accents

If you thought Brexit meant we could all burn our EU law textbooks and start fresh, think again. Derivatives traders in London still live under the watchful gaze of EMIR (that’s the European Market Infrastructure Regulation, not a villain from a Marvel film) – only now there’s also a

Betting Firms vs Prediction Markets: When the Bookies Meet the Spreadsheet Brigade

Betting Firms vs Prediction Markets: When the Bookies Meet the Spreadsheet Brigade

STS vs Non-STS: When Securitisation Plays by the Rules (and When It Doesn’t)

STS vs Non-STS: When Securitisation Plays by the Rules (and When It Doesn’t)

Some financial products arrive wearing a neat suit and carrying all the right paperwork. Others turn up late, slightly rumpled, and insist they’re more fun anyway. The securitisation market has both, and the velvet rope dividing them is the STS label. STS – short for “simple, transparent and standardised” – was

Market Abuse in the UK – Don’t Even Think About It

Market Abuse in the UK – Don’t Even Think About It

Markets only work if people believe the game isn’t rigged. If share prices are being nudged up by whispers in the pub or knocked down by spoof trades in New York, trust crumbles. And that’s where the UK market abuse regime comes into play – a bundle of rules

SumUp’s $15 Billion Question: London or New York?

SumUp’s $15 Billion Question: London or New York?

You know a fintech has grown up when the question shifts from “How many cafés use their card readers?” to “Which stock exchange wants them?” That’s where SumUp now finds itself. Born in 2012 with a pocket-sized card reader for tiny shops, it has since done some serious bulking

Liability Management: Tenders, Exchanges and Consent Solicitations

Liability Management: Tenders, Exchanges and Consent Solicitations

If debt were a pet, it would be the sort that looks harmless when you bring it home, then grows teeth and starts demanding attention at the worst possible time. Rising rates, cash squeezes, or a stack of bonds all maturing at once can make even well-run companies sweat. That’

Disclosure in Bond Markets: The Art of Telling All (and Not Getting Sued)

Disclosure in Bond Markets: The Art of Telling All (and Not Getting Sued)

If you’ve ever been to a dinner party where someone insists on chewing your ear off with their life story, you’ll know that too much information can be… well, a lot. In the bond markets, however, oversharing isn’t just polite – it’s the law. This article looks

Buying Homes with Bitcoin? Christie’s is Giving it a Go

Buying Homes with Bitcoin? Christie’s is Giving it a Go

You know things are getting strange when the same auction house that sells Picassos is now flogging houses for crypto. Christie’s has launched a billion-dollar real estate division in California where you can pay for your mansion with digital coins. No Monopoly money here –actual crypto, signed off by

Bond Covenants – Why Investors Don’t Just Cross Their Fingers

Bond Covenants – Why Investors Don’t Just Cross Their Fingers

Handing over money to a company without rules attached is a bit like lending your flatmate cash for “the food shop” and discovering they’ve bought a jet ski instead. Bondholders aren’t daft, so they insist on covenants – promises and restrictions buried in bond documents that keep issuers from

Corporate Actions and Securities Lending – Who Gets What?

Corporate Actions and Securities Lending – Who Gets What?

Corporate actions are the big moments in a company’s life. A dividend here (“thank you for holding our shares”), a rights issue there (“we’d like a bit more of your cash, if you don’t mind”), or, occasionally, a dramatic takeover (“we’re running off with someone richer”