Iain Balkwill

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CMBS & CRE CLO – Heroes of the Future

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes If the latest forecasts are true, then we will imminently be subjected to a long and deep recession and therefore now is the opportune time to draw comparisons against previous downturns and lessons learned. Indeed, given the nature of these beasts, there is always a chief protagonist or metaphorically speaking … Continue Reading

CRE hedging – friend and foe

Read time: 5 minutes For better or for worse, interest rate hedging instruments have an important role to play when it comes to financing commercial real estate (CRE). For the past decade or so, these products have enjoyed a relatively low profile following the excesses of the period leading up to the global financial crisis … Continue Reading

CRE CLO versus the old and outdated brush

When speaking to market participants and commentators about Europe’s first ever CRE CLO, more frequently than not there is an inference that the Starz Real Estate CRE CLO is the first since the global financial crises (GFC). This is certainly a view that has merit, thanks to the fact that on the eve of the … Continue Reading

European CRE CLO – a catalyst for multi-loan CMBS

Read time: 4 minutes For the erstwhile market observer, when you compare CMBS 2.0 against the backdrop of the pre Global Financial Crisis (GFC) crop of deals, one resounding observation is that the latter had a significant number of so called “conduit” deals, where transactions featuring eight or more loans were in plentiful supply.  This … Continue Reading

CRE CLO versus CMBS – two peas in a pod?

Read time: 2 minutes When speaking to market participants about the intricacies and benefits of CRE CLO technology, more frequently than not the first point that I have found myself explaining is the difference between a CRE CLO and CMBS. It is certainly a fair question, as ostensibly both products are the same given that … Continue Reading

European CRE CLO technology cannot be ignored

Read time: 2 minutes The European commercial real estate (CRE) lending market is currently awash with an oasis of interest when it comes to the deployment of CRE CLO’s as a means of financing loans secured by CRE. To date, debt funds that have financed CRE have been reliant on a myriad of sources of … Continue Reading

Time for European CMBS and CRE CLOs to rocket!

Read time: 1 minute 20 seconds There’s no doubt that 2021 was an outstanding year for European structured CRE credit activity. And as attention turns to 2022, the scene is clearly set for it to be the most exciting, innovative and ground-breaking year since CMBS broke onto the European scene in the early noughties. Truly, … Continue Reading

There’s a buzz in the air and it’s CMBS!

Read time: 3 minutes 2021 is so far proving to be a stellar year for European CMBS, and if the current momentum continues 2021 will go down as a truly bumper year for the product.  Like many other financial transactions, despite a promising start to 2020, CMBS certainly ended up having a torrid ride on … Continue Reading

Navigating the NPL Securitisation maze

Read time: 4 minutes 25 seconds NPL Securitisation is a term that is very much en-vogue at the present time. Although its rise to prominence can be attributed to a number of factors, in recent weeks the chief contributor has been the European legislature steps towards amending the Securitisation Regulation and the Capital Requirements Regulation. … Continue Reading

CMBS 2.0 – Standardisation the fuel for exponential growth

Whether you are a supporter of using CMBS to finance commercial real estate or not, the simple fact is that it provides an efficient mechanism to transfer commercial real estate loan risk away from the banking sector, whilst at the same time providing much needed transparency to the commercial real estate lending market. In light … Continue Reading

It is time for CMBS to flourish

Read time: 2 minutes 20 seconds The economic fallout of COVID-19 will be hugely significant for the European CMBS market, as a perfect testing environment has been created to truly examine the resilience and robustness of CMBS 2.0. Indeed, the impact of COVID-19 will be a true litmus test as to whether those structural reforms … Continue Reading

Can the EBA and Basel Committee proposals help banks clean up their balance sheets using NPL securitisations?

Read time: 8 minutes At a glance A large number of legacy non-performing loan exposures (NPLs) continue to subsist on the balance sheets of banks. Portfolios of NPLs tie up huge amounts of regulatory capital which, in turn, limits the amount of capital that banks have available to lend to the real economy. The economic … Continue Reading
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