A trio of new-deal pricings on Dec. 1 pushed the U.S. CLO market to a new quarterly issuance record of $47.46 billion, the fourth consecutive period in which managers set a new high mark for deal printing, according to LCD data.
The $1.32 billion in deals from AIG Asset Management ($510 million), Onex Credit Partners ($400.8 million) and Symphony Asset Management ($406.75 million) elevated the fourth-quarter level above the previous high of $47.05 billion set in the third quarter.
The third-quarter number had unseated the short-lived $43.41 billion record set in the second quarter, which had bested the equally brief $39.76 billion issuance mark from January to March — a figure that was an initial sign of an unprecedented wave of institutional investor demand coming to the market in 2021.
The total volume of CLO deal issuance in 2021 stands at $177.68 billion from 360 deals through Dec. 1, well surpassing the previous record of $128.86 billion in 2018.
Other records falling this year were the number of managers issuing deals, 122, as well as the large tally of refinancings and resets this year totaling a combined $232.68 billion across 508 deals. The refinancing/reset count is the largest since LCD began tracking repricing activity of outstanding deals in the market in 2016.
European CLO issuance records have also fallen, including a new annual record of €37.81 billion through Dec. 1.