Kristian Orssten, co-head of leveraged finance for EMEA, says that three factors mark out JPMorgan from its peers: client relationships, global reach and execution excellence. But client relationships give the bank the greatest edge.
“The depth and breadth of our relationships across both corporate and financial sponsor clients means that we do not rely on any one industry or segment of the market for business, and we have a global platform that allows us to execute deals seamlessly across markets, using the broadest pools of liquidity,” says Mr Orssten.
Prior to the market dislocation of the past few weeks, the enormous amount of liquidity available to borrowers was a key driver for the loans business. Mr Orssten says that understanding investors across the entire credit spectrum is critical. “This gives us valuable insight into the pulse of the market and allows us to put products in front of the borrowers that we know will work with investors.”
Mr Orssten is particularly proud of a number of deals in which the bank has been involved this year. “World Directories and Trader Media showed that covenant-lite deals could be done in Europe, after years of successful executions in the US,” he says. “Cognis was the first deal that was jointly executed in both the loan and the bond market for pari passu debt. We remain proud of the overall diversity of the business and broad-based deal flow.”
Nevertheless, his outlook for the immediate future is cautious. “CDOs and hedge funds have experienced unprecedented volatility and severe losses. Until there is a demonstrable return of liquidity to the loan markets, we expect the tone to remain cautious and highly selective for new deals.”
