KBRA recently attended the annual CLO Conference hosted by the Loan Syndications & Trading Association (LSTA) and DealCatalyst, which took place at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York on April 28-29. With up to 1,700 attendees, the conference comes on the heels of record U.S. CLO issuance of around $200 billion in 2024. This strong pace continued in first-quarter (Q1) 2025 with approximately $45 billion in total volume, as issuers pushed spreads to multiyear tights.
The evolving U.S. tariff policy underscored virtually every panel and conversation, with dealers and other participants generally adopting a “wait-and-see” approach, as uncertainty has already pushed CLO spreads wider, clouding the issuance pace. Overall, the tone of the conference could be described as cautiously optimistic. CLOs are cycle-tested and participants were generally confident in continued resilient performance in the face of uncertainty surrounding ever-changing tariff policy. Below, we provide…