Leveraged Finance Support

Leveraged finance support to banks

Bespoke and comprehensive support across the high-yield bond issuance and leveraged loan lifecycle, combining our experience across deal origination, execution, underwriting, portfolio monitoring and operations

Leveraged Finance Support

We are the market leader in outsourcing support to banks’ leveraged finance and high-yield capital markets teams, offering a full suite of services covering the entire loan lifecycle including origination, underwriting, execution, loan operations and portfolio monitoring. Our leveraged finance teams support global and regional commercial and investment banks, including 3 of the top 6 leveraged loan issuers in the US market and 3 of the top 10 high-yield bond bookrunners in EMEA.

Our domain experts have extensive experience in supporting banks on leveraged finance transactions including capital raising for acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, refinancing and recapitalisation, and project financing. We are experienced in monitoring our clients’ large leveraged lending portfolios across geographies and sectors and helping them set up robust monitoring and control functions to proactively assess credit risk while generating insights for making informed credit decisions.

We also understand from our experience that banking operations services require standardisation, optimisation and robust risk management. We support banks in completing manual tasks that require both knowledge of processes and an understanding of core systems, such as Loan IQ, ACBS, NCino, AFS and FIS.

Who we serve

Support we offer in leveraged finance

High-yield bonds

  • New bond/issuance support

  • Market updates

  • Bond pricing, secondary levels

  • Investor profiles

  • Capital structure analysis

  • Pitchbook support

  • Investor presentations

  • Benchmarking

  • Company profiles

  • Deal run/league tables

  • Covenant analysis Open Link

  • Orderbook analysis

  • Peer analysis

  • Debt maturity profiles

Acquisition finance

  • Company profiles

  • Peer analysis

  • Precedent transactions comps

  • LBO transactions comps

  • Organisation structure

  • Share price performance

  • Pitchbook support

  • LBO models

  • Industry overviews/research

  • Credit memos

  • Benchmarking

  • Capital structure analysis

  • Target/deal/peer screening

Leveraged loan origination

  • Information memorandums

  • Transaction/bank notes

  • Underwriting memos

  • Company profiles/teasers

  • Financial models/analysis

  • Capital structure analysis

  • Debt maturity profiles

  • Benchmarking

  • Macroeconomic overviews

  • Industry overviews

  • Loan/debt comparables

  • Term-sheet drafting

  • Deal run/league tables

  • Liquidity analysis

Underwriting

  • Financial models with projections

  • Detailed free cashflow analysis with de-leveraging trajectory

  • Bank case, downside case, debt-repayment analysis

  • Sensitivity analysis

  • Liquidity and working capital analysis

  • Enterprise valuation (EV) analysis

  • Risk and mitigants analysis

  • Preparing credit memos

Credit monitoring

  • Tracking financial news

  • Tracking credit events and impact analysis

  • Detailed financial analysis

  • Financial model updates

  • Reviewing bank case, downside case, debt-repayment analysis

  • Collateral analysis

  • Borrowing base analysis

  • Liquidity and debt maturity trends

  • Covenant analysis and headroom trends

  • Annual and quarterly credit reviews

  • Indicative rating analysis

Early-warning mechanism/dashboard reporting

  • Building triggers to track performance at the portfolio level

  • Borrower-level heat maps

  • Portfolio dashboards with earnings- and liquidity-tightening triggers

  • Variance analysis of actual performance vs original projections and budget

  • Actual exposure vs hold limits

Lending operations

  • Closing and post-closing data-quality assurance

  • Document preparation and deal booking

  • Loan servicing and modifications

  • Collateral management

  • Loan trading – operations

  • Reconciliation services

  • Covenant monitoring

Regulatory support

  • Regulatory audit support, i.e. SNC/ECB

  • Internal audit support

What we have delivered anually

100+

live deals supported in secured environments

8,000+

reports compiled with financial analysis

2600+

credit/LBO models designed

7,500+

items of news tracked

Customer Testimonials

The quality and depth of analysis provided are extremely good and add significant value to the CPM and wider FIC businesses. It’s much appreciated, and we will certainly look to get your insights on a number of other exposures that are part of the CPM portfolio.

Top German bank

Head, XVA and Regulatory Capital Trading

Team – Thanks a lot for your hard work on the stress test. The results were presented to the CEO and the senior management of the bank today, and everyone complimented the efforts and content.

French CIB

Head of Asset Management

I would say that the service has been very good in general. Your work is extremely time-saving in regard to putting together the monthly sector updates, especially in their more expanded form and with the email updates as well. Appreciate that we have made them more complicated in regard to the content but you have been able to accommodate that and it is greatly appreciated.

APAC-focused leading global bank

Director, Leveraged & Acquisition Finance and Private Credit

We are very impressed with the quality and depth of this report, and it was straight sanction without any queries. For a new to bank deal at this loan size that is incredibly rare, and I want to thank you for your efforts here. The interest-only element could have been a challenge, but the Credit Risk team felt the reason had been explained fully and so was happy to support.

Bulge-bracket bank

Managing Director, US Leveraged Lending

Automation and workflow management platforms

How we are different

ONE-STOP SHOP FOR LEVERAGED FINANCE SOLUTIONS
ONE-STOP SHOP FOR LEVERAGED FINANCE SOLUTIONS
Comprehensive support across the leveraged loan and high-yield bond value chain (origination, execution, underwriting, distribution, portfolio monitoring and loan operations)
FINANCIAL SERVICES DOMAIN EXPERIENCE
FINANCIAL SERVICES DOMAIN EXPERIENCE
19 years of extensive experience gained from working as a best-in-class KPO firm with 350+ financial clients globally
DEEP FUNCTIONAL KNOWLEDGE COMBINED WITH CREDIT PEDIGREE
DEEP FUNCTIONAL KNOWLEDGE COMBINED WITH CREDIT PEDIGREE
Market leader in credit analysis support, with best practices developed through 80+ client engagements. Deep functional knowledge of all advisory and funding aspects of leveraged finance support with a number of LBO transactions
SCALABLE PARTNER
SCALABLE PARTNER
Strong track record in scaling client engagements for different tasks across the leveraged finance value chain. Ability to use strategic delivery locations and strong recruitment functions for flexible and niche resourcing
EXPERIENCED TEAM TO UNDERTAKE COMPLEX TASKS
EXPERIENCED TEAM TO UNDERTAKE COMPLEX TASKS
Highly experienced and effective analysts who do the heavy lifting for you across the leveraged finance process, including LBO models and covenant and headroom analysis
TECH-DRIVEN INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
TECH-DRIVEN INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
Our domain-driven suite of Business Excellence and Automation Tools (BEAT) ensures efficiency across the leveraged finance value chain

Tailored Data, Technology, and Presentation Design Services for Investment Banks

Explore the art of possible in optimizing processes across the deal lifecycle. Automate repetitive and redundant task freeing up more client-facing time for your bankers.

What we have done

Support for Consulting and Corporate Firms
Leveraged and acquisition finance support to a UAE-based bank
What we are proud of

10-12%

efficiency gains

30-40%

Volume Growth

DCM, loan syndication and leveraged finance support to a UK-based bulge-bracket investment bank
What we are proud of

18-20%

more client-facing time

35-40%

productivity gains

Debt capital markets (DCM) support to a Europe-based mid-size investment bank
What we are proud of

Established a strong relationship

Freed up onshore team’s capacity to handle more-value-adding tasks

Debt capital markets (DCM) support to a US-based commercial bank
What we are proud of

USD30k annual cost savings per resource

Timely turnaround on regular tasks and flexibility to handle urgent work

Capital markets support to a Middle East-based bank
What we are proud of

Enabled more focus on clients and investors

Provided real-time support through virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

Credit markets support to a UK-headquartered global bank
What we are proud of

18-20%

more client-facing time

35-40%

productivity gains

Debt Capital Markets (DCM) support to a UK-based European bank
What we are proud of

Faster turnaround time, with increased accuracy

More capacity for core functions

Integrated IB Analytics and BIS for Asia-Focused Mid-Size Investment Bank
What we are proud of

>95,000

projects delivered

>$6m

annual savings on headcount

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Frequently Asked Questions

How Acuity can support onshore Leveraged Finance Investment Banking teams?

The team of Acuity Leveraged Investment Banking Finance experts provides extensive research and analytics support to investment banks and advisory firms to assist their clients in raising capital for acquisitions, spin-offs, leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, refinancings & recapitalizations, project financing, and other purposes. We have expertise working with our clients in the structuring, syndication, and distribution of leveraged loans and high-yield bonds.

What is the difference between Leveraged Finance and Acquisition Finance?

Leveraged Finance and Acquisition Finance in investment banking can be primarily differentiated based on the type of acquirer. In Leverage Finance, the acquirer is a financial sponsor or private equity fund, while in Acquisition Finance, the acquirer is a corporate.

What services one would expect in Leveraged Finance Investment banking?

The leveraged and acquisition finance teams in investment banks help leveraged borrowers and issuers to raise capital through a mix of high-yield bonds and term loans. Such teams help in originating, structuring and executing complex event driven financing solutions including acquisition financing, leveraged buyouts, merger financings, bridge financings, recapitalisations and refinancings. Areas of expertise of leveraged finance investment banking include high-yield bonds, leveraged loans, acquisition finance, bridge financing and underwriting. The leveraged finance Investment Banking teams also provides corporates and financial sponsors advice on capital structuring and credit ratings, and works closely with the investment bank’s DCM, M&A, Coverage, Loan Syndications, Sustainable Finance and Syndicate functions.