Lots of Noise About Cov Lite Loans
Lots of recent clamoring on this topic as the cov-lite trend is dominating the US and now infecting Europe. Choice quote, "This year, 70% of the region’s new leveraged loans are known as covenant-lite, according to LCD, more than triple the number four years ago." Sounds like there is a lot of money chasing very few deals. Covenants are falling and pricing is increasing (yield baby!), with recent PE leverage ratios exceeding loan underwriting guidelines. Deutsche Bank warns, "We're overdue a correction." Interestingly, we noticed a strange parallel this week in the venture capital space where, suddenly, after a long lapse in talk about "bubbles," notable investors like Fred Wilson and Brad Feld wrote about dealing with a crash/collapse. You'll recall that Howard Marks wrote about cov-lite a few weeks ago in the midst of expressing caution. Perhaps we'd better launch our ICO soon before the window closes.