TwentyFour Asset Management’s Eoin Walsh breaks down a turbulent first quarter for investors, driven by newly imposed Trump tariffs and shifting economic forecasts.

As the first quarter of 2025 concludes, TwentyFour Asset Management’s Pauline Quirin shares her take on the strong performance of the securitisation market and insights for European ABS and Collateralised Loan Obligations (CLOs).

With the market focus over the last week or so being firmly on equities and credit spreads, it is worth zooming in on developments in the European bank credit default swap (CDS) market.

While much of the focus in private credit has been on direct lending, Significant Risk Transfer (SRT) is emerging as a compelling alternative. What began as a regulatory tool is now gaining traction with a growing investor base, as banks look to optimise capital and issuance reaches record highs.

“Liberation Day” has landed, and not with a whimper. In extraordinary scenes in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Trump held up a board outlining the level of tariffs the US will impose on countries around the world, and in most cases they were worse than worst-case expectations.

If we look at the main drivers of returns in Q1 2025, the first one that comes to mind is tariffs. But while this is true for equities and credit spreads, in the context of global fixed income the main driver of total returns in Q1 was the Bund sell-off triggered by a momentous shift in German fiscal policy.

Bondholder expectations are an important topic in the Additional Tier 1 (AT1) market. They are often perceived as a “soft” factor that is hard to quantify, and may often appear at odds with the purely economic considerations of the issuer when it comes to refinancing costs.

With the recent economic spotlight dominated by President Trump’s rhetoric and Germany’s blockbuster fiscal expansion plans, Wednesday brought the UK back into focus with the latest round of inflation data and the Spring Statement from the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves.