Altice Debt Pain Threatens to Cause Chaos for Fragile CLO Market

  • If rating gets a downgrade, CLOs may dump debt cheaply
  • Citi says 90% of European CLOs are exposed to Altice’s debt
Photographer: Zed Jameson/Bloomberg
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Altice’s debt woes threaten to wreak havoc for a crucial cog of the leveraged finance market.

Collateralized loan obligations may look to dump their Altice France holdings at fire-sale prices if its debt gets downgraded by one notch to Triple C. That’s because CLOs — the biggest buyers of leveraged loans — have strict limits on how much of the riskiest junk debt they can own.