SMBC takes top CLO spot less than a year after pricing first fund
In just its first year under its new structured credit leadership team, Japanese lender SMBC jumped to the top of the US CLO league table after arranging zero deals in January 2025.
During the last 12 months, the bank has more than doubled the size of its CLO structuring team, hiring senior talent from across the Street, and arranged transactions for asset managers including PineBridge Investments and Benefit Street Partners, all part of a larger buildout of SMBC’s North American investment banking platform.
SMBC, which has roots dating back more than 400 years, has spent the last few years focused on growing its North American investment grade, leveraged finance, and securitisation businesses, including CLOs.
“What we really tried to do was build a durable fixed-income platform alongside lending,” according to Scott Ashby, co-head of coverage and capital markets, SMBC Americas, and president, Nikko Securities America, who joined the bank in 2021 from Morgan Stanley.
“It’s been about hiring the right people and adding content to our capital. The common thread of our hires are people that want to come and build a franchise from scratch on the back of one of the largest balance sheets in the world.”
A strong CLO business was paramount to that effort. The decision coincided with two straight years of record issuance in the asset class. A total of US$202.97bn was arranged last year, topping the prior high of US$197.9bn set in 2024, according to LPC Collateral data. The most optimistic bank forecasts are calling for another record year in 2026.
“As we looked at the strategy of the firm ... and building it out to be a full-service investment bank where lending and capital markets would sit side-by-side, it was pretty evident we should build out a cornerstone CLO business,” said Paul Burke, GM of the securitised products and capital solutions department, SMBC Americas, who joined the bank in 2023 from Morgan Stanley.
One of SMBC’s first steps in developing its CLO business was hiring Christine Ferris, head of securitised products, SMBC Americas, who built her reputation at JP Morgan serving as global head of CLO primary. The US investment bank was the number one arranger of US new issue CLOs in 2024, her last year at JP Morgan.
Ferris met with Ashby in 2024, where he laid out his vision for SMBC’s North American platform.
“So there I was, someone who is itching to build, someone who spent a lot of my career helping other people build their businesses and their brands with a shot to do that myself,” Ferris said in an interview about her decision to join the Japanese bank. “It would be an amazing opportunity for anyone, but for the things I care about, it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”
When the bank began to build its securitisation team, it looked to Ferris’ JP Morgan colleagues, tapping Anusha Joly as head of CLO origination and syndicate, SMBC Americas, and Mussie Tizazu as head of CLO origination and structuring, SMBC Nikko Securities America.
Additional key hires include Daniil Blinov, a Barclays veteran, who joined in May as an executive director on the CLO originations and structuring team, and Dominique Martinez, also an executive director, who came on board in June from Deutsche Bank.
First steps
Ferris’ first order of business was to hold one-on-one meetings with every person on her team, from administrative assistants through to managing directors. She wanted to learn more about their backgrounds and find any areas of the business that needed to be addressed.
“I said, ‘This is a safe space, let me know what works and what you think works less well',” Ferris explained. “All of the things people highlighted that we could do better, I immediately looked into. There is no substitute for talking to people; really being on the ground floor, in the weeds with your team. It’s important to me ... to say, ‘Tell me what you think we should do. What can I do better? What can the team do better?’.”
By the end of her first week, Ferris called a team meeting to lay out her goals for the business.
“I want to be excellent, I want to achieve, but I don’t just care about what we do, I care about how we do it,” she told the team. “I want to take care of our clients; I want to take care of each other. I want to be operationally excellent. I want to be super disciplined about risk, and I want to win a lot of mandates.”
Hit the ground running
In the first quarter of 2025, the bank spent time looking at its credit process and framework for CLO warehouses. It then turned its focus to raising new deals, leveraging the connections and long careers of its new hires to attract managers to build its pipeline.
It priced its first two refinancings – CLOs managed by Octagon Credit Investors and Trinitas Capital Management – on February 26. It priced its first new issue CLO for Elmwood Asset Management on April 17 amid volatility following president Donald Trump’s "liberation day" tariff announcements, which caused CLO spreads to gap out and loan issuance to dry up for about three weeks.
With less than a full year of activity, SMBC finished 2025 in 18th place on the new issue US CLO league table, according to LPC Collateral data. It sat in the 14th spot for the second half of last year.
In January, less than a year after it arranged those first two refinancings, SMBC sat atop the US CLO league table for combined new issue, refinancings and resets.
This month, the bank has priced refinancings and resets for firms including CIFC Asset Management and Ares Management, and arranged a new broadly syndicated CLO for Antares Capital.
Abry Partners, which raised its second-ever CLO, Abry Liquid Credit 2025-2, with SMBC in November, praised the CLO team for its expertise and market knowledge.
“We were impressed by the team’s experience, collaborative approach, and genuine passion for helping clients succeed,” said Mike Ferrante, head of Abry Liquid Credit. “It was clear from our earliest conversations that SMBC was invested in our future and aligned with our values, making them the right partner as we continued to build momentum in our CLO program.”
In 2026, the bank plans to build its European CLO team, modelled after its US CLO platform. And it will seek to continue to grow its US business, after exceeding internal projections.
“We closed 2025 ranking beyond our expectations, with significant momentum going into 2026,” Burke said.