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Loan market participants enter 2019 looking back at a miserable December. Senior secured loans traded off the most since early 2016. BB-rated loans were trading below $96.00 for the first time in the three-year span and nearly all loans fell below par.

Popular BDC holdings Global Tel Link, Sorenson aim to widen 1L margins; several credits up for add-ons appear in Barings BDC’s portfolio

A deluge of earnings took center stage last week and while results inevitably spurred a number of notable downside movers, the tone in the broader leveraged finance market slowly improved over the course of the week, opening the door for new opportunistic business such as Bausch Health’s latest refinancing effort. Among the week’s biggest earnings-related standouts were Air Methods, Akorn and Revlon.

MARKET RALLY MARCHES ON ? : The BDC sector – as measured by the BDC Wells Fargo Index – was up 2.7% last week, reflecting a broad based rally across the 45 public companies tracked. That was the second week in a row that the BDC sector headed up in price, following 5 consecutive weeks of descent that ended the prior rally which had begun in March 2018.

Last month we shared a list of the top 10 BDC non-accruals based on first quarter 2018 SEC filings. Now that we are mid-way through August and second quarter filings are readily available, let’s take a fresh look at the first quarter’s worst performer.