Awards for Excellence 2014: Best global leveraged finance house

It has been an extraordinary year in leveraged finance. The high-yield bond markets have attracted unprecedented interest and allocation from investors worldwide and have been the focus of the chase for yield that has so dominated the debt markets. Management of issuer and investor expectations, together with the ability to best exploit the opportunities that market conditions afford, are the prerequisite for Euromoney’s leveraged finance house for 2014. Goldman Sachs has more than met these challenges.

One deal dominates any discussion of leveraged finance in the last 12 months: the $30 billion acquisition of SFR by Altice/Numericable Group and the story it tells about the development of the European high-yield market. “The coming of age and maturation of the European capital markets this year is quite impressive,” says Denis Coleman, head of European leveraged finance at Goldman Sachs in London. “Now we have another capital market out there in addition to the US, which makes for a more mature asset class globally.