North America CLO House: Bank of America
Leadership quality In a record year for US CLO primary activity, Bank of America leveraged the full breadth of its resources in support of its issuer and investor clients. For maintaining its leadership in the CLO market, Bank of America is IFR’s North America CLO House.
Bank of America was an industry leader in US CLO issuance and CLO trading in 2024, winning praise from market participants for supporting its clients and for structuring new issues effectively.
More than US$197bn of US CLOs were sold in the year, topping the record of US$182.7bn in 2021, according to LPC Collateral data. And as the most active arranger, Bank of America put together deals for some of the largest managers, including funds for Ares Management, PineBridge Investments, Octagon Credit Investors, Neuberger Berman and Marathon Asset Management.
The bank combined the efforts of its global CLO team – arranging, trading and financing – allowing it to seamlessly address clients’ financing needs through bespoke structures.
The CLO group is aligned and sits with the global credit trading business, which allows it to help clients source the underlying loans that make up the portfolios. Bank of America was the largest US leveraged loan bookrunner in 2024 with a 9.35% market share, according to LPC data.
“The way we think of our business is as one integrated team that provides financing solutions for asset managers globally and whether our clients choose to build their business in the bilateral market and leverage Bank of America’s balance sheet … or choose to access capital markets via CLO execution, we are really a one-stop shop to help our clients grow,” said David Trepanier, global head of global credit-structured products.
Bank of America’s focus on providing longstanding clients with financing solutions was evidenced by an approximately US$950m private credit CLO it raised for Antares Capital. The bank has provided the investment firm with bilateral financing for several years against a portfolio of private credit loans. And last year Antares determined it wanted to pivot to the CLO market to finance the portfolio.
In the first half of 2024, Bank of America arranged Antares 2024-2, in which the bank held a financing exposure through a US$450m Triple A tranche in loan format while distributing the rest of the capital structure as CLO notes. The bank said this deal allowed it to maintain financing support for Antares while executing the CLO transaction.
The bank was also active in CLO refinancings, resets and reissues, which saw record volume in 2024, according to LPC Collateral data.
The bank arranged refinancings and resets for managers including Redding Ridge Asset Management, PineBridge, CIFC Asset Management and Oak Hill Advisors.
“We pivoted our resources to the most high-value-add component of our clients’ execution strategy,” Trepanier said. “We’re not trying to be everything to everyone at all times; you can’t be, otherwise you spread yourself too thin and you run the risk of falling behind.”
Bank of America pointed to the efforts of its secondary team, noting that up to the end of November the bank’s CLO desk traded US$36bn of CLOs with 385 clients globally, with US trading volume up 21% during that period. The bank said its global focus allows it to provide liquidity to clients in the US and Europe and attributes its success to its strong CLO research team.
“We can meet your solutions whether it’s financing, capital markets execution, [or] trading of CLOs in one stop with a team that has been in place for well north of a decade,” Trepanier said.
“We are very proud of that – our clients come to us and know that they are getting a consistent product, consistent quality, consistent execution globally and liquidity on the products that we create for them on the secondary desk all in one stop.”
To see the digital version of this report, please click here.
To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email leonie.welss@lseg.com
