Collateralized loan obligation (CLO) equity has emerged as a source of potentially robust, and front-loaded, returns for sophisticated investors.
Over the past 30 years, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) have grown from a niche asset class into a $1.2 trillion pillar of the corporate financing markets, representing about 70% of demand for US corporate loans today.1 The variable-rate CLO debt securities issued on the backs of these loans have become a mainstay of institutional portfolios, given their dependable, and frequently attractive, yields.
Yet CLOs offer another attractive option for investors: their equity tranches, which capture the difference between what a CLO earns in loan interest and what it owes the CLO debtholders. For a certain group of discerning investors, this is the most interesting part of a CLO – a hybrid investment combining the prospective double-digit returns of private equity with a quarterly distributed front-loaded cash flow more akin to bonds.
Volta Finance Ltd (LON:VTA) is a closed-ended limited liability company registered in Guernsey. Volta’s investment objectives are to seek to preserve capital across the credit cycle and to provide a stable stream of income to its Shareholders through dividends that it expects to distribute on a quarterly basis.