Fixed + Floating - The Credit Podcast

Josef Pschorn
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Investing
  • Updated Biweekly

Fixed + Floating is a credit podcast for investors and finance professionals. Hosted by credit portfolio manager Josef Pschorn, the show features conversations with leading voices from investing, research, and academia on private credit, high yield, distressed debt and credit cycles. We break down the technical mechanics of credit markets — from covenant evolution and liability management to restructuring, quantitative credit, and the impact of macro policy. New episodes twice per month.

  1. Sep 8

    Who Pays for the GPUs? How Lenders Underwrite AI Infrastructure | Ankur Patel (Ares)

    Ankur Patel⁠ (Ares Credit Group) on asset-based finance for data centres, power and GPUs. A one-gigawatt data centre costs $15–20 billion to build. The GPUs and servers inside it can run $40 billion-plus, and they are the shortest-lived asset in the project. Josef Pschorn speaks with Ankur Patel about how that credit is structured so a lender is not relying on residual chip value to get repaid. Shownotes and analyis: https://www.fixedandfloating.com/⁠ Ankur Patel: Partner, Ares Credit Group (Alternative Credit). LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankurjpatelcfa Ares Management: https://www.aresmgmt.comConnect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedIn ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating⁠ | X ⁠https://twitter.com/FixedFloating⁠ Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 11.08.2026#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #assetbasedfinance #privatecredit #gpufinancing #datacenters #aiinfrastructure

  2. Aug 26

    Do Restructurings Still Cut Debt? How Amend-and-Extend Took Over | Mike Harmon (Stanford GSB)

    An amend-and-extend moves the maturity and leaves the leverage where it was. A debt-for-equity swap cuts the debt and dilutes the equity. The first is routine and the second is rare, and the constraint is not legal - most of the holder base cannot take the equity or does not want it. Josef Pschorn speaks with Mike Harmon of Stanford Graduate School of Business about why out-of-court restructurings extend maturities without reducing debt, and what has to be true before a company actually deleverages. Once a company is worth less than its debt, the equity is an out-of-the-money call option, so shareholders buy time and volatility rather than repair the balance sheetWithout maintenance covenants, creditors cannot force a reduction in debtMost of the holder base does not want equity: CLOs have equity buckets, mutual funds have mandates, and only distressed funds want the positionCreditors are not one actor - a lender hedged with CDS or a par lender who has not marked down has a different payoff from a discount buyerPrivate credit changed the composition of the holder base rather than the law, which is where debt-for-equity swaps are actually getting doneThe US has liability management at one end and Chapter 11 at the other with nothing in between, while the UK, Japan, France and China all run a lighter court-supervised path Mike Harmon: Stanford Graduate School of Business. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-harmon-92b130184 The Financial Restructuring Tool Set (Columbia University Press): https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-financial-restructuring-tool-set/9780231216982/ Liability Management’s Limited Runway: Corporate Restructuring Today, Mark J. Roe, Vasile Rotaru - Oxford Business Law Blog Connect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | X https://twitter.com/FixedFloating Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice. Recorded: 24.08.2026 #fixedfloating #creditanalysis #liabilitymanagement #distresseddebt #restructuring #privatecredit

  3. Aug 4

    Inside a Long/Short Credit Hedge Fund: Sizing, Shorts and LME Risk — Frits Lieuw-Kie-Song (Ironshield Capital)

    A fifteen-billion-dollar manager's European analyst can look at three or four situations before the rest fail his liquidity screen. Frits Lieuw-Kie-Song runs a few hundred million and can look at hundreds. This is a full walk through how a long/short credit hedge fund is actually run. Full analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/how-a-longshort-credit-hedge-fund?r=718tew&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Josef Pschorn speaks with Frits Lieuw-Kie-Song ofIronshield Capital about building a market-neutral high yield book: which credits are eligible, how positions get sized, when a short earns its borrow, and where the tail hedge sits. Liability management exercises now bring the mediancompany back within roughly a year, because the fee-driven process fixes the balance sheet without fixing the business.Being in the co-op group is not the same as sitting on the committee, and Frits will pass on a situation where he cannot influence how the pie is divided.A 400 million single-bond capital structure is too small to matter for a fifteen-billion manager, which is where in-depth research still earns its keep.Position size is dictated by the downside case, with a loss budget of roughly 50 basis points of the fund per position.The tail hedge is put spreads 5 to 15% out of the money, six months out, rolled regularly, written for the event where correlation goes to one.Two worked trades: Evoke after the UK online gamingtax move, bought at a 70 LTV with a takeover catalyst, and Volta Grid during the data centre construction scare.Ironshield Capital: https://ironshieldcapital.com/Connect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | Xhttps://twitter.com/FixedFloatingFixed + Floating is for informational purposes only.Not investment, legal, or tax advice.Recorded: 27.07.2026#fixedfloating #creditanalysis #highyield#longshortcredit #liabilitymanagement #europeancredit

  4. Jul 21

    Illiquidity in Private Credit: Why a $25M Loan Takes Six Weeks to Sell | Alex Cordover (Tradable)

    Private credit has grown to roughly $2 trillion, but selling a single position remains a manual, bilateral process. Exiting a $25 million loan means NDAs, a data room, agent and borrower consents, and bespoke documentation — four to six weeks from decision to settlement, if a buyer is found at all. Full analysis: [INSERT SUBSTACK LINK] Josef Pschorn speaks with Alex Cordover, CEO of Tradable, about the exact mechanics of private credit secondaries — what happens between the decision to sell and settlement, and what a functioning secondary market requires. The full transfer anatomy: NDA, data room (loan tape, financials, original IC memo), non-binding IOI, consents, documentation, settlementParticipation vs assignment: in a default, participation rights typically run against the seller, not the borrowerMarks vs prices: every deal closed on Tradable has printed at par plus a buyer's premium, while valuation lag persists in software and direct-lending booksWhy trades die: information asymmetry and GPs unused to working together — not asset qualityWhere liquidity comes first: asset-backed, equipment and real estate finance before bespoke unitranche and distressed names Guest links: https://tradable.xyz | https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-cordover-72a0a276 Connect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | X https://twitter.com/FixedFloating Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice. Recorded: 15.07.2026 #privatecredit #privatecreditsecondaries #creditmarkets #fixedincome #assetbackedfinance

  5. Jul 8

    Stress in MicroStrategy’s Preferreds: Why the Doom Loop Didn’t Happen | Mark Palmer (StoneX)

    MicroStrategy’s preferred shares dropped more than 20% over a few weeks. Then an 8-K reversed the mood, handingthe company buyback authority over both its preferred and common stock for the first time. The headlines focused on a small Bitcoin sale; the more important story was buried underneath it. Full analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/stretch-is-not-cash-the-lesson-from?r=718tew&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Josef Pschorn speaks with Mark Palmer of Benchmark-StoneX, the first Wall Street analyst to cover Strategy, about how the company’s capital structure actually holds together and what genuinely changed. Key takeaways: The 8-K gave Strategy “two-way capital management” for the first time — the ability to buy backpreferred and common stock, not just issue new securities to buy Bitcoin. Perpetual preferred stock behaves like near-permanent capital: no maturity wall, not dilutive while outstanding, and tax-advantaged as return of capital for as long as the company posts no positive net income. The recent Stretch selloff was driven by forced deleveraging among investors who had levered the position, not by any change in the Bitcoin backing the instrument. A common misconception — that a falling Stretch price increases Strategy’s cash dividend obligation — is simply wrong; the dollar obligation is fixed regardless ofprice. Strategy’s $6.75 billion convertible debt carries a blended coupon of just 0.52%, with the real risk being the 2028–2032 maturity wall rather thaninterest expense. Guest links: https://www.benchmarkcompany.com/leaders/1601/ Connect with Fixed + Floating: LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | Xhttps://twitter.com/FixedFloating Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice. Recorded: 01.07.2026

  6. Jun 23

    Big Market Delusion: Why Private Credit Is AI’s Biggest Loser | Aswath Damodaran (NYU)

    Each AI company can price itself on an internally consistent story about winning its market. Sum those stories and the implied revenues exceed any market that could exist — the big market delusion. Aswath Damodaran puts a ceiling on it: $142 trillion in global revenues last year against $20–25 trillion in employee costs, which makes the $26 trillion addressable market in SpaceX’s IPO pitch fiction. The sharper question for credit investors is who absorbs the loss when it corrects. Full analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/financing-the-big-market-delusion?r=718tew&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Josef Pschorn speaks with Aswath Damodaran of NYU Stern about valuing the AI boom, the corporate life cycle, and why the credit side of the build-out carries the asymmetric risk. Key takeaways: ​The biggest loser when the delusion corrects is private credit, not equity — lenders carry the downside without the upside, and “you can’t make interest payments withpotential and promise.” ​Financing should act its age: young companies should use converts or no debt; default risk belongs in the cash flows (value the firm twice, weight by survival probability), not in an inflated discount rate. ​In distress, equity is a call and debt is a put — a passive lender in a levered company is short an option whose variance the equity holder controls. Connect with Aswath Damodaran: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ | X https://x.com/AswathDamodaran Connect with Fixed + Floating: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating | Xhttps://twitter.com/FixedFloating Fixed + Floating is for informational purposes only. Not investment, legal, or tax advice. Recorded: 15.06.2026#fixedfloating #creditmarkets #privatecredit #valuation #Damodaran

  7. Jun 9

    Distress in Auto Suppliers: Why Operational Fixes No Longer Work | Steiner (PWC) & Hauke (Willkie)

    A third of Europe’s auto suppliers now sit in the distressed zone, and the share has barely moved in two years. Thesector has stopped behaving like a set of single restructuring cases and started behaving like a structural problem — one where operational stabilization no longer fixes the credit story. Full written analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/the-autosupplier-problem-that-refinancing?r=718tew&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Josef Pschorn speaks with Daniel Steiner of PwC and Dr. Hendrik Hauke of Willkie Farr & Gallagher about whyEuropean auto-supplier distress has become structural, and how the restructuring toolkit actually gets used when it does. Key takeaways: 40% of automotive CEOs expect their company not to last ten years on the current path; 33% of Europeansuppliers are already distressed. The binding constraint is the cost ofcapital — German suppliers carry the highest interest-to-EBIT ratio of anyregion. Europe runs 25–30% overcapacity and China around 50%, making consolidation, not refinancing, the real cure. LEONI’s StaRUG delevered successfully the balance sheet Guest links: PwC https://www.pwc.de | Willkie https://www.willkie.com Fixed + Floating: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/FixedFloating⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠https://fixedfloating.substack.com/⁠⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Recorded: 04 June 2026. #fixedfloating #creditmarkets #autosuppliers #restructuring #distresseddebt

  8. May 26

    HY Building Materials: Why It’s Really One Housing Trade | Andy Belton (Creditsights)

    US high-yield building products are a leveraged play on the US housing cycle dressed up across ten different tickers — and the concurrent distress in Cornerstone, JELD-WEN, Old Castle, and USLBM is the proof. Full written analysis: https://open.substack.com/pub/fixedfloating/p/one-housing-trade-ten-tickers-the?r=718tew&utm_medium=ios Andy Belton, Senior Analyst and Head of European Basics & Infrastructure at CreditSights, joins Josef Pschorn to unpack the structural fault lines that separate heavyside (cement, aggregates, ready-mix) from lightside (windows, doors, cabinets, distribution) in credit terms — and why that distinction is now producing a wave of concurrent liability management exercises on both sides of the Atlantic. Key takeaways: ​Cement prices compounded at 4–5% annually over 20 years versus 1–3% for lumber — structural pricing power, not cycle management​A 5% volume decline translates into a 10–20% EBITDA decline for fixed-cost light side manufacturers at today's utilization rates​JELD-WEN carries nine times leverage with December 2027 maturities going current in December 2026 — the unsecured bonds are already pricing the shock absorber role​Pfleiderer's Silekol drop-down — 90% equity sold to unrestricted subs, new debt raised — is the European J.Crew playbook, now deployed post-restructuring​When sponsors reach for LMEs instead of conventional refis, they are signalling they no longer believe the cycle turns fast enough to clean up the capital structure Guest: Andy Belton is Senior Analyst and Head of European Basics & Infrastructure at CreditSights, where he has covered global building materials for over two decades. Prior to CreditSights, he spent ten years at Citigroup as Head of European Ratings Advisory and began his career at Fitch predecessor IBCA. — https://creditsights.com Fixed + Floating: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fixed-floating⁠ | ⁠https://twitter.com/FixedFloating⁠ | ⁠https://fixedfloating.substack.com/⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Recorded: 18 May 2026. #fixedfloating #creditanalysis #creditmarkets #buildingmaterials #highyield #LME #JELDWEN #CreditSights #cement #housingmarket

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Fixed + Floating is a credit podcast for investors and finance professionals. Hosted by credit portfolio manager Josef Pschorn, the show features conversations with leading voices from investing, research, and academia on private credit, high yield, distressed debt and credit cycles. We break down the technical mechanics of credit markets — from covenant evolution and liability management to restructuring, quantitative credit, and the impact of macro policy. New episodes twice per month.

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