12 years of credit winners
Some things change but the drive for excellence is constant
The Creditflux Manager Awards demonstrate remarkable longevity, having recognised for a 12th year the very best the market has to offer. We look back at 219 award winners and how they’ve changed over time.
The Creditflux Manager Awards once looked very different to today. Launched with impeccable timing in 2007, the first awards ceremony was a black-tie dinner in the V&A museum in London. CLOs have been a constant throughout the history of the awards, but a wider range of CDOs were originally recognised, including trups CDOs, ABS CDOs and corporate synthetic CDOs.
While some of those early finalists have since fallen away, a lot of the big names are still widely recognised in the market today – BlueMountain Capital Management, Cheyne Capital and BlackRock were all winners. Other winners, like Babson Capital and Prudential, may have changed their branding in the years since but are still the same recognisable managers.
The awards also took place in 2008, but the unravelling financial crisis eventually necessitated a break in proceedings. The manager awards would return slightly ahead of the CLO market, with the third annual ceremony taking place in May 2011. The categories are recognisable today and reflected the shift in Creditflux’s coverage, focusing exclusively on the best CLOs and credit funds in the market.
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Prize winners down the years
Since 2011, the Creditflux manager awards have been here to stay - standing testament to CLOs’ durability as an asset class. With the completion of the 12th annual ceremony, there have been 776 individual finalists recognised since the awards began and 219 awards handed out to worthy recipients.
The most prestigious title has always been Creditflux’s Manager of the Year award.
10 firms have been named Manager of the Year through the awards’ history. Highland Capital Management was first recipient of the award in 2007, having been nominated for having the best fund as well as being the best manager in hedge fund and CLO categories. The only managers to win the award twice are Credit Suisse Asset Management, which won the top prize in 2013 and 2018, and Guggenheim Investments, named Manager of the Year in 2012 and 2015.
The award recognises consistent performance over all eligible categories. In both years CSAM won, it registered consistently high ranked CLOs in both the US and European markets. In both 2012 and 2015 Guggenheim had proved able to outperform across several categories, having been recognised not only for US CLOs but also structured finance and high yield funds. Some of the managers that won awards frequently in the early years would go on to be acquired by other managers. Harbourmaster, for example, won an impressive eight awards across the 2007, 2008 and 2011 ceremonies before GSO Capital Partners took over the firm in October 2011.
This would prove to be a shrewd investment. Creditflux reported in 2014 that Harbourmaster Pro-Rata 3 had made the largest recorded equity payment to date by a European CLO. It would go on to become the second Harbourmaster CLO to win the best redeemed European CLO category for GSO in 2019, after Harbourmaster CLO 7 secured the accolade in 2017.
Looking to the future
Despite every shift and upheaval in the credit market since the awards began, many leading industry alumni maintain their enviable status. Of the 16 managers that won an award back in 2007, 10 are still key participants in the structured credit industry.
Adding to this stable, many new managers have also joined the market – in the CLO universe alone 89 managers have made their debut since the 2.0 market opened, including Spire Partners and Rockford Tower Capital Management, the 2019 and 2020 Creditflux Manager of the Year winners. Both new contenders and perennial favourites will be in consideration for the Creditflux Manager Awards when they return in 2021.
Global credit funds & CLO's
Award Supplement
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