Few things seem to get US regulators as worked up as covenant-lite lending. Having originally been seen as the last gasp of market excess before the crash in 2007, cov-lite loans have returned with a vengeance over the last couple of years. They now account for close to 70% of all new lending in the US leveraged loan market.
It is primarily this development that the contentious leveraged lending guidelines introduced by the OCC, the Fed and the FDIC last year (which focus on four areas – enterprise value, covenants, cashflows and leverage multiples) were designed to tackle.
Access this research
Enter your work email address to sign in or check whether your organisation already has access to Euromoney.
