Collateralized loan obligation

Collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) are a form of securitization where payments from multiple middle sized and large business loans are pooled together and passed on to different classes of owners in various tranches. A CLO is a type of collateralized debt obligation.

Each class of owner may receive larger yields in exchange for being the first in line to risk losing money if the businesses fail to repay the loans that a CLO has purchased. The actual loans used are multimillion-dollar loans to either privately or publicly owned enterprises. Known as syndicated loans and originated by a lead bank with the intention of the majority of the loans being immediately "syndicated", or sold, to the collateralized loan obligation owners. The lead bank retains a minority amount of the loan while usually maintaining "agent" responsibilities representing the interests of the syndicate of CLOs as well as servicing the loan payments to the syndicate (though the lead bank can designate another bank to assume the agent bank role upon syndication closing). The loans are usually termed "high risk", "high yield", or "leveraged", that is, loans to companies which owe an above average amount of money for their size and kind of business, usually because a new business owner has borrowed funds against the business to purchase it (known as a "leveraged buyout"), because the business has borrowed funds to buy another business, or because the enterprise borrowed funds to pay a dividend to equity owners.

The reason behind the creation of CLOs was to increase the supply of willing business lenders, so as to lower the price (interest costs) of loans to businesses and to allow banks more often to immediately sell loans to external investor/lenders so as to facilitate the lending of money to business clients and earn fees with little to no risk to themselves. CLOs accomplish this through a 'tranche' structure. Instead of a regular lending situation where a lender can earn a fixed interest rate but be at risk for a loss if the business does not repay the loan, CLOs combine multiple loans but don't transmit the loan payments equally to the CLO owners. Instead, the owners are divided into different classes, called "tranches", with each class entitled to more of the interest payments than the next, but with them being ahead in line in absorbing any losses amongst the loan group due to the failure of the businesses to repay. Normally a leveraged loan would have a fixed interest rate, but potentially only a certain lender would feel that the risk of loss is worth the interest that is charged. By pooling multiple loans and dividing them into tranches, in effect multiple loans are created, with relatively safe ones being paid lower interest rates (designed to appeal to conservative investors), and higher risk ones appealing to higher risk investors (by offering a higher interest rate). The whole point is to lower the cost of money to businesses by increasing the supply of lenders (attracting both conservative and risk taking lenders).

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