Credit Analysis for Below-Investment-Grade Bonds and Loans

By Robert S. Kricheff

The high-yield leveraged bond and loan market is now valued at $4+ trillion in North America, Europe, and emerging markets. What’s more the market is in a period of significant growth.

To successfully issue, evaluate, and invest in high-yield debt, financial professionals need credit and bond analysis skills specific to these instruments.

This fully revised and updated edition of A Pragmatist’s Guide to Leveraged Finance is a complete, practical, and expert tutorial and reference book covering all facets of modern leveraged finance analysis.

Long-time professional in the field, Bob Kricheff, explains why conventional analysis techniques are inadequate for leveraged instruments, clearly defines the unique challenges sellers and buyers face, walks step-by-step through deriving essential data for pricing and decision-making, and demonstrates how to apply it.

Using practical examples, sample documents, Excel worksheets, and graphs, Kricheff covers all this, and much more: yields, spreads, and total return; ratio analysis of liquidity and asset value; business trend analysis; modeling and scenarios; potential interest rate impacts; evaluating leveraged finance covenants; how to assess equity (and why it matters); investing on news and events; early-stage credit; bankruptcy analysis and creating accurate credit snapshots.

This second edition includes new sections on fallen angels, environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment considerations, interaction with portfolio managers, CLOs, new issues, and data science.

A Pragmatist’s Guide to Leveraged Finance is an indispensable resource for all investment and underwriting professionals, money managers, consultants, accountants, advisors, and lawyers working in leveraged finance. It also teaches credit analysis skills that will be valuable in analyzing a wide variety of higher-risk investments, including growth stocks.

Robert S. Kricheff is the global strategist and a principal and portfolio manager at Shenkman Capital, a $27 billion investment firm focused on credit. Prior to this he was a managing director at Credit Suisse for over twenty years, working in leveraged finance analysis on bonds, bank debt, and CDS, and ran the Leveraged Finance Sector Strategy Group. At various times he oversaw emerging market and European bond research.

Robert has lectured at New York University, University of London, and Columbia University, and at industry events such as the Milken Institute conferences. He has a BA in Economics and Journalism from New York University and an MSc in Financial Economics from SOAS University of London.

He has published three books and two ebooks on investment analysis, including Data Analytics for Corporate Debt Markets, A Pragmatists Guide to Leveraged Finance, and That Doesn’t Work Anymore.