2026 is set to be another seismic year for global CLO issuance as demand remains pent-up, although primary markets have been characteristically sleepy to kick off January.

However, quality affordable loans are still scarce, while LMEs loom large, managers and investors tell 9fin.

Market participants shared below a few perspectives on key developments, risks, and opportunities that lie ahead in the new year.

Read as well our coverage of year-end outlooks from research desks for European and US CLOs, alongside our coverage of the industry’s convening in California at Opal’s CLO Summit in December.

Catch a rising star

Tiering is reappearing, as discussed at Opal last month, and some investors are noting newer standout managers.

Dispersion has been most evident at the bottom of the capstack. As 2025 ended, “the median transaction equity return was negative, but there was a fairly wide dispersion, and the top quartile performance was better,” said Dagmara Michalczuk, co-CIO at Tetragon Credit Partners.

Over the past few years, Michalczuk said, the loan market has seen greater volatility as CLO equity investors focused more on “the stability of the market value and total returns of the portfolios, including realized and unrealized losses, which is a very simple way of understanding whether they're adding positive or negative alpha relative to the benchmarks, and to their peer group.”