Credit Live - Tuesday 13th May 2008, London

A collection of the credit market's foremost participants convened on May 13 for the inaugural Credit Live event, sponsored by Standard Bank, MarketAxess and TradeWeb. Item one on the agenda was the keynote address from Dr Viral Acharya, professor of finance and director of the private equity institute at the London Business School. The panels kicked off with a discussion of opportunities in emerging markets during the credit sector's current state of flux, and the audience was then treated to a no-holds-barred discussion of the credit rating agencies' role in the turmoil afflicting the market. Legal & General's head of credit research Georg Grodzki listed some of the buy side's grievances in a panel moderated by Sunita Kara, senior credit analyst at Baring Asset Management. Kai Gilkes of Emea Investor Services and late of DBRS also spoke, with the agencies' defence supplied by Richard Hunter at Fitch and Simon Collingridge from S&P.

Gene Yeboah, head of structuring at Schroders, presided over a discussion of the future of structured credit with Gilkes, Bank of Ireland Asset Management's head of credit portfolio management Niall O'Leary, his counterpart at CAAM Jean-Marie Dumas, and David Hawa, senior investment specialist in structured credit at Fortis Investments. Jonathan Laredo moderated the penultimate panel, on ABS, and was joined by Putnam's fixed-income CIO Rob Bloemker, Morley Fund Management credit analyst Allen Twyning and a voluble Pierre Py, global head of credit analysis, euro fixed income and credit at CAAM.

The final session, moderated by Risk magazine's Radi Khasawneh, looked to the future, with contributions from Grodzki, Ilex Asset Management CIO Simon Thorp, Alliance Bernstein's European research director Martin Reeves and Frances Hutchinson, head of credit research at European Credit Management.