Governments and regulators need to be investors' “best friend” as they face a new wave of non-performing loans, said panellists involved in NPLs in Europe, China, and globally on a webinar, The New Rise of NPLs - Strategies and Investment Opportunities in the Market, aired live yesterday (14 October) during Debtwire Week.

The inaugural gin-tasting for Women in Fixed Income will bring together professionals from across the debt markets for an evening of open and inclusive conversation.

Italy, the political situation, its widening spread and the increasingly tense relationship with the EU are as topical as Brexit, these days.

This year is once again set to be a record year for the European non-performing loans (NPL) market, according to new data from Debtwire ABS, presented yesterday (17 October) at Debtwire Week.

We learnt a lot from Debtwire Week 2018, with industry experts taking to the stage to highlight the challenges in the market.

We've put together all the insights from the inaugural Debtwire Week where we discussed leveraged finance, markets and real estate markets. 

Distressed investors have long become resigned to too much liquidity in the European leveraged finance market providing get-out-of-jail-cards to many borrowers, and looming political risks not being priced in. 

Some 200 attendees rolled into Debtwire’s “Leveraged Finance Day” – the opening event for Debtwire Week – at London’s Waldorf Hilton hotel yesterday (10 October) to hear a plethora of opinions and predictions for European leveraged finance, with panel topics spanning the state of high yield bonds and TLB markets, to covenants critique, CLOs and direct lending.

• Continued covenant erosion to hit call protection and see signs of market overheating

• European retail sector has fared well compared to other sectors in spite of uncertainty
• Matalan and House of Fraser have reported positive results amid post-Brexit challenges
• However dark clouds still remain on the horizon as consumers get ever more stretched

Restructuring Day focused on the insights from investors about how they are evaluating distressed opportunities.

• Italy appears to be addressing its EUR 200bn bad debt mountain
• EUR 60.9bn across 16 deals are currently ongoing
• Investors are moving south showing interest in Greece’s EUR 100bn and Portugal’s EUR 36bn debt

Markets Day at Debtwire Week took a closer look at opportunities in Southern Europe and Real Estate.

• EUR 209bn has already been deployed this year across leveraged loans and high yield bonds
• Leveraged loans experienced a record year during the first half of 2017
• Refinanced capital took 61% of transactions during first three quarters of 2017

Leveraged Finance Day considered the outlook for loan and bond markets. The impact of buoyant valuations and ample liquidity was a theme throughout the discussions. Watch sessions from the event again. 

Andreas Ziegenhagen, European Head of the Restructuring, Insolvency and Bankruptcy at Dentons tells us where he sees European restructuring heading in the next 12 months and what he learned from the past year. 

We caught up with Federico Sutti, Italy Managing Partner at Dentons to get his views on the Italin NPL reforms before his panel discussion at the Italian Restructuring Form at Debtwire Week. 

The European commercial real estate market got off to a slow start in 2017. Transaction volumes during the first quarter are thinner than a year earlier. However, there are enough interesting themes emerging this year.

2016 proved to be another challenging year for the restructuring community, mostly as a result of a continued slim pipeline of workouts and distressed opportunities. Hedge fund returns remained well off the pace of their previous years, although bets on commodities, especially oil & gas, paid out handsomely, enabling many funds who had jumped in too early the prior year to make good their previous losses.

Last year defied many forecasts, with the Brexit referendum and election of US President Trump both upsetting the odds. This year could also be challenging for leveraged finance, with reduced central bank tailwinds as well as the triggering of Article 50 in the UK. Commodity-price volatility also leaves further jitters ahead, while the Netherlands, Germany, France and Norway face elections.