All eyes are on the buyside as ASF2012 kicked off Sunday, with industry players hoping a good turnout from investors will signal appetite for a forward calendar. An official at a financial advisory firm said in recent years --for obvious reason -- there has not been much to draw investors. “‘Where are all the investors?’ they’d ask me, and I’d say ‘Show me what you’re doing to earn them back, and I’ll show you the investors,’” the advisor said.
But with north of $4 billion in ABS alone hitting screens the week before the conference, and assurances from all sides that there’s more in the pipeline, bank officials expressed an optimistic outlook that investors are ready to get back in the game. “What we’re seeing in the market is that investors are fully engaged—investors are certainly looking to add assets to their portfolios,” said Michael Millette, head of structured finance at Goldman Sachs. “We’re not just seeing volumes, but also a breadth of order book that is really distinctive versus what we saw in the fourth quarter. It looks like they’ve got some dry powder they’re ready to put to work, having come back from the holidays with a constructive outlook.”
Sell-side industry players aren’t the only ones with a dog in the fight, however. An RMBS investor told SI that picking other investors’ brains on strategy was one of the chief benefits of attending the conference. “I’d rather talk to other investors and hear about what they’re doing and what areas they think are likely to do well this year than sit in a panel that takes on the legal minutia that, as an investor, we don’t need to be diving into head-on ourselves.”
Multiple sources told SI they would be concentrating almost exclusively on the one-to-one meetings with other industry professionals. “I have 16 or 17 meetings lined up,” an investor said. “The way I see it is you can spend an hour in a session, or 15 minutes with someone over a beer and get 10 times the info in a quarter of the time.”
As for what to expect after the conference: “Diversity,” according to Millette. “There’s a whole raft of deals coming up including whole business securitization, residential mortgages, auto, student loans, other corporate securitizations, bank loans, CLOs, CMBS and insurance-linked securities,” he added. “I don’t know what volumes will be completed, but the array of offerings in January and early February will be rich and very broad.”