Dave Trepanier’s path into structured credit wasn’t linear. Growing up on a French-Canadian farm in rural Ontario, he learned grit, teamwork, and how to make decisions when outcomes are uncertain—lessons that would later show up in an unlikely place: the earliest days of the CLO market. Now Global Head of GCSS-Structured Products in FICC Trading at Bank of America, Dave has helped build one of the industry’s leading CLO and CDO trading franchises while navigating every major modern credit cycle.

In this episode, Dave walks through the long road from political science and law school plans to financial engineering, options markets in Chicago, and a pivotal move to Charlotte—where CLOs were still modeled by hand in Excel off faxed trustee reports. We discuss what those “stone age” workflows taught him about risk, liquidity, and market structure, how the product evolved through telecom and the GFC, and why electronification, data, and systematic strategies may define the next chapter of credit markets.