Banks that want more explicit regulatory guidance on rules requiring managers to keep "skin in the game" with deals for collateralized loan obligations may be forced to keep waiting.
CLO managers, in particular, would like to know how deals that are currently grandfathered might trigger compliance when they are refinanced.
The Securities and Exchange Commission did publish a "no-action" letter in July, clarifying that a CLO manager could refinance without triggering compliance in a very specific situation. The most important condition was that the CLO had to be issued before the risk retention rule was published on Dec. 24, 2014.
That letter, however, was some six months in the making, as its author, David Beaning, pointed out at a recent asset-backed securities conference in Miami Beach, Fla., hosted by the Information Management Network. Beaning suggested that it could take even longer to get another one.
"The interagency process is a slow one that requires consensus," said Beaning, who until recently was special counsel in the SEC's Office of Structured Finance and is now in private practice. "Timelines need to be adjusted."
The SEC consulted on the no-action letter with the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Beaning went on to elaborate on how the SEC, at least, came around to the CLO market's way of viewing this particular kind of transaction.
"The SEC became very comfortable because we viewed the refinancing as almost a conditional tender option for investors that allowed them to get out at par," Beaning said. "If it was taken away, triple-A investors…would be harmed."
As it happens, there is another, very specific kind of transaction for which the collateralized loan obligation market would like to have regulators' blessing.
Meredith Coffey, head of research at the Loan Syndications and Trading Association, described it this way in addressing Beaning at the conference: A manager prints a $500 million CLO before risk retention rules take effect, and in two years refinances the $200 million triple-A tranche. Based on a careful reading of the rules by law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, this would only trigger a requirement to retain 5% of the risk in the triple-A tranche, or $10 million, either through equity or triple-A notes, and not 5% of the entire, $500 million deal.
"That's the reading people we work with see," Coffey said.
