Clover Woes Attract Wall Street Attention

Clover Woes Attract Wall Street Attention

In less than a week, financial news magazine Bloomberg has reported that yet again Clover Technologies Inc., (Clover) is in trouble.

The journal reported, in the past week Clover “abruptly — and alarmingly — caught the attention of Wall Street. Almost overnight, a $693 million loan Clover took to the market five years ago lost about a third of its value. The startling nosedive stung even sophisticated investors, people who deal in the arcane business of trading corporate loans.”

Just five days ago, Bloomberg reported Clover had brought in law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP and investment bank Jefferies LLC to evaluate balance sheet alternatives and strategic options.

Bloomberg editorialises that the Clover loan is “not especially large by Wall Street standards”, but goes on to use Clover as a “real-life example of the perils of investing these days in the $1.3 trillion market for leveraged loans.”

Bloomberg opines that at a time when market trading can be thin, the Clover episode illustrates “how loans to highly leveraged companies can quickly implode when fortunes change.”

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