equity friendly or noteholder friendly the role of collateral.pdf

Equity friendly or noteholder friendly? The role of collateral asset managers in the col- lapse of the market for ABS-CDOs Thomas Mählmann Chair of Banking and Finance, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Auf der Schanz 49, 85049 Ingolstadt, Germany This version: April 2012 Abstract This paper shows that ABS-CDOs (i.e., collateralized debt obligations backed by asset- backed securities) managed by large market share managers have higher ex post collateral default rates. The paper also finds that (1) large manager deals, while having higher realized default rates, do not carry more default risk ex ante (at origination), as measured by the deal fraction rated AAA or the size of the equity tranche, (2) ex post, these deals have higher per- centages of home-equity loans, subprime RMBS and synthetic assets in their collateral pools, and larger asset-specific default rates and issuer concentration levels, (3) compared to smaller managers, large market share manager deals pay out higher cash flows to equity tranche in- vestors prior to the start of the subprime crisis (July 2007) but significantly lower cash flows afterwards, and (4) investors demand a (price) discount on non-equity tranches sold by large manager deals. In sum, this evidence is consistent with a conflict of interest/risk shifting ar- gument: some managers boost their market share by catering to the interests of the deals’ eq- uity sponsors. JEL classification: G21, G28 Keywords: Conflict of interest, Credit Rating, Collateralized Debt Obligation, Yield Spread  Tel.: +49 841 937 1883; fax: +49 841 937 2883. E-mail address : thomas.maehlmann@ku-eichstaett.de 1. Introduction Since the beginning of the financial market crisis in the summer of 2007 securitized produ