Paul Conley

Loan tranches for triple As are having a moment. A variety of CLOs in recent weeks have been structured with a loan tranche at the top of the stack, which, according to market participants, points to the involvement of US bank triple A buyers.

I’ve had some strange and frustrating conversations in the past few weeks with people in B2B journalism. Those conversations are, perhaps unsurprisingly, about artificial intelligence. Much of the world seems to be involved in difficult conversations about artificial intelligence. Why should B2B journalism be any different?
But what I have found particularly troubling is how much these conversations remind me of conversations I had with B2B journalists nearly 20 years ago when Web journalism ...

Banks are buying their way to growth by purchasing registered in-
vestment advisor (RIA) firms at a pace unseen in decades. However,
this boom in acquisitions carries risk. In many instances, the financial
executives on both sides of these deals lack the expertise to avoid it.
“In theory, a deal can look great, but in practice, it’s a lot more diffi-
cult,” said Scott Stathis, managing partner at Stathis Partners.
A slew of factors — tax and regulatory law, a lack of succession
planning by ...

Coming just days after the retailer said it might seek bankruptcy protection, the poor earnings report paints a dismal picture for the beleaguered retailer.
Key takeaways:
Comparable store sales declined 31% versus the fiscal 2021 third quarter.
Digital sales fell 33% from a year earlier.
By banner, comparable sales fell 34% at Bed Bath & Beyond and declined in the low-twenties at Buy Buy BABY compared to the prior year period.
Bed Bath & Beyond said net sales plummeted 33% in its fiscal thir...

As lender-on-lender violence increases, CLO managers are being forced to dedicate staff time to protecting their interests when a loan looks to be troubled.

Daoism, a religious tradition with roots in China dating back more than 2,000 years, is undoubtedly the major world religion least understood by Westerners. There are dozens of reasons for that, but the primary one is that the syncretic nature of Chinese religious practices tends to blur the lines between Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, etc. When you meet a Westerner who claims to be a Daoist, you’re likely to find they’re really more of a confused Buddhist or a spiritually inclined Confucian...

So here’s the difficulty. You want to look stylish, not fashionable. Or to put it another way, you want your clothes to reflect who you are, but you don’t want your clothes to reflect what everyone else is wearing. So you try to avoid paying too much attention to “fashion” or to “trends.”
Yet putting too much effort into avoiding what is fashionable or trending can lead to poor clothing choices. Guys who pay too little attention to what other guys are wearing wind up appearing dated, not styl...

The definitive guide to business casual clothes for men who aren't casual about business.

While the growth of CLO AAA ETFs is grabbing headlines, a similar surge in ETFs buying mezz paper could have a bigger impact on pricing.

Andrey Klen is pleased with how things went for his company on Amazon.com during Prime Day this year. The co-founder and chief marketing officer of Petcube said “Prime Day performed much better in comparison to the previous year. Compared to an average day, we’ve seen a double-digit multiple on sales. We were able to beat optimistic high growth projections on our main product.”
That product is Petcube Cam, a wifi camera that allows people to watch and interact with their pets remotely.
The Pe...

Given the various approaches that marketplaces take to product pages, sellers must dedicate resources to managing SKUs and listings across multiple marketplaces.
There may be good reasons for a brand to sell on a number of online marketplaces — most notably that by appearing on a variety of marketplaces, a merchant has access to a broader and more varied collection of possible customers.
But it ain’t easy. Doing what it takes to manage a brand’s products across marketplaces requires a conside...

There’s no federal requirement that employers offer retirement plans for workers. So, a number of states are rolling out requirements of their own. In most cases, these state-administered plans require that workers be auto-enrolled in a Roth Individual Retirement Account (IRA) funded through automatic payroll deductions.

When Kyle Vassallo joined Timex Group USA Inc. in 2017, he knew something needed to change. The Connecticut-based watchmaker was facing a slew of fraudulent orders, and the system to prevent ecommerce fraud was slow and cumbersome.
“It was a very manual process,” Vassallo, the senior manager of global ecommerce operations, told Digital Commerce 360. Timex had only one employee dedicated to online fraud detection. “He would kind of go through and look at what he judged as possible fraud and th...

Today the Religious Society of Friends, popularly known as the Quakers, is a small group best known for its advocacy of non-violence. Not to be confused with the Amish, the Mennonites or any of the other “peace churches,” the Quakers are largely invisible in the modern world. The drab clothing and the use of “thee” and “thou” in speech persisted in some Quaker communities and families well into the 1900s. But that world is no more.
Today there are Quakers scattered throughout American life. Y...