Creditflux Newsletter

Good luck to Alcentra chairman and chief executive David Forbes-Nixon who is this month embarking on an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for the charity Operation Smile UK, of which he is a trustee.

Forbes-Nixon (pictured with his son, George, who will be climbing with him) hopes to raise £20,000, which will enable him to take a mission to Kenya to carry out cleft lip, cleft palate and burns operations. He admits to being nervous about the climb, but he is determined to complete it.

“This work genuinely changes these kids’ lives,” he says. Readers can show their support by donating online at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Forbes-Nixon.

Speakers on a panel at the LSTA conference in London last month pondered whether rebranding CLOs would help the market return.

Asked to come up with alternative terms, McDonnell Investment’s Michael Herzig – not taking the exercise entirely seriously, we suspect – suggested “loans on leverage” (LOL).

ING’s Dan Norman, however, seized the opportunity to distance the product from the racier excesses of the securitisation business.

His suggestion – “corporate loan term funding trust” or “funding trust” for short – is a stroke of genius. After all, what risk committee could disagree with a decision to put money into something called a trust?

“Keep in mind GS [Goldman Sachs] is an aggressive seller of risk for QTR [quarter] end purposes (last day of quarter is this Friday).”

Goldman Sachs Aussie salesman George Maltezos’s alleged sales pitch on the disastrous 2007 Timberwolf CDO of ABS, according to court filings. Basis Capital, being a naive hedge fund unused to the wily ways of Wall Street, was apparently taken in by this unoriginal ruse.