In March, three high-profile capital markets partners left Weil, Gotshal&Manges' London office to join Ashurst Morris Crisp. One of them, Erica Handling, has a strong reputation for expertise in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), acting for Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Nomura, among other clients.
This development underlines the escalating competition between the London offices of the big US securitization law firms and their UK peers. Structured finance in Europe - and in Asia - may have some way yet to go before it begins to rival the enormous US market, but euro-denominated and/or European-based deals are on the increase and the deal pipeline is, by all accounts, well stocked, especially with CDO transactions.
CDOs, in their purest form, are vehicles that invest in high-yield bonds and loans with low credit ratings, spreading the risk of potentially low-performing individual investments across a highly-diversified portfolio.