Onex brings upsized $764 million CLO; Babson prices; Symphony refinances; trading light

By Cristal Cody

Tupelo, Miss., April 13 – Onex Corp. announced on Monday that subsidiary Onex Credit Partners, LLC priced an upsized $764 million CLO deal in a private placement transaction.

The OCP CLO 2015-8 Ltd./OCP CLO 2015-8 Corp. transaction was upsized from an expected $510 million offering of notes due 2027.

BofA Merrill Lynch was the placement agent.

Final pricing details were not available by press time.

Onex said it purchased a majority of the equity in the transaction.

Onex Credit Partners, the credit investing arm of Toronto-based Onex, priced three CLO transactions in 2014.

In other primary action, Babson Capital Management LLC brought a $512.13 million offering.

Symphony Asset Management LLC also refinanced $371.5 million of notes in a vintage 2012 CLO deal.

Total U.S. issuance has climbed to about $32.6 billion, with $15.8 billion printed in March, according to BofA Merrill Lynch.

“Coming into the year, we thought risk retention might constrain issuance,” the analysts said in a note. “As potential solutions are starting to emerge, loan supply and the arbitrage may instead be the limiting factors.”

BofA Merrill Lynch forecasts $75 million to $90 billion of U.S. CLO issuance in 2015.

In the secondary market, trading has been light with bid-wanted-in-competition volumes totaling under $300 million in the previous week, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch report.

Babson raises $512.13 million

Babson Capital Management priced $512.13 million of notes due April 15, 2027 in a CLO offering, according to a market source.

Babson CLO 2015-I Ltd./Babson CLO 2015-I LLC sold $320 million of class A senior secured floating-rate notes at Libor plus 143 basis points in the senior tranche.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC was the placement agent.

Babson Capital Management will manage the CLO, which has a 1.5-year non-call period and a four-year reinvestment period.

The CLO is backed primarily by first-lien senior secured loans.

Proceeds from the deal will be used to purchase a portfolio of about $500 million of primarily senior secured leveraged loans.

Babson brought three U.S. CLO transactions and two euro-denominated CLO offerings in 2014.

The global asset management firm is based in Springfield, Mass.

Symphony refinances 2012 CLO

Symphony Asset Management sold $371.5 million of notes due July 23, 2023 in a refinancing of the vintage 2012 Symphony CLO Ltd. transaction, according to a market source.

At the top of the capital structure, the CLO sold $260 million of class A-R floating-rate notes at Libor plus 127 bps, tighter than where the notes originally priced at Libor plus 151 bps.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc. was the refinancing agent.

Symphony Asset Management is the CLO manager.

Proceeds will be used to fully redeem the original class A, B, C, D and E notes.

Symphony Asset Management, a San Francisco-based asset management firm, brought two CLO transactions in 2014.

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