Global Capital’s U.S. Bureau Chief Oliver West joins Cogcast to discuss the delicacies of banker-source relationships, reporting on the capital markets and the value in speaking with the trade media – despite the paywalls. In this latest episode, Olly talks about his career journey from covering Latin American bonds to the U.S. ABS market as well as how he prefers to work with sources and the balance between on the record and on background when covering the capital markets.

Larissa Padden 0:06

Hello, and welcome to Cogcast, Cognito's podcast, where we talk to journalists and media pros on everything that's happening in the world of media and PR. I'm Larisa Padden, your host this episode, and a former journalist turned PR professional. Today I am very excited to speak with Oliver West, U.S. Bureau Chief at GlobalCapital, because he oversees a team of reporters that cover, among many things, the ABS market.

For those maybe not familiar, ABS stands for asset-backed securitization, which at its most basic level is when lenders bundle loans and sell them to investors for a portion of the interest that consumers pay. It is also my former beat, so hopefully you enjoyed my conversation with Olly as much as I did.

So thank you for joining us, Olly.

Thanks for having me, Larissa.

I am very excited for our conversation today because I've shared on this podcast before, obviously, that I'm a former reporter, but my last role right before joining Cognito was as a securitization reporter at Debtwire, and that's a sector that you oversee at GlobalCapital. But first, I wanted to start by asking you to give us a little bit about your background as a reporter and editor, and then your current role at GlobalCapital.

I think it's safe to say that not many of us grow up dreaming of being securitization reporters. Like a lot of us in this industry, I started with an interest in writing. I ended up in Colombia as part of my studies, needed to find something to do, and ended up writing for a local paper about second division Colombian soccer.

And when I finished uni and needed a job, well, it was quite hard to get a journalism job away from the trade press, but there were plenty of financial journalism jobs, and I kind of fell into Euroweek, which is GlobalCapital's old name, writing about the loan market. I spent a couple of years in London doing that.

Then I wanted to go back to Colombia, managed to persuade my editor that it was a good idea for me to cover Latin American bonds, which are a pretty fascinating topic. I spent 10 years there, was offered a new challenge about a couple of years ago, came to New York, still covering my baby, which is LATAM debt, but helped sort of oversee the expansion of our securitization coverage here in New York. So, yeah, and it's perhaps more fascinating than I've ever imagined.

I absolutely agree with that. And I will share, I was an art history major for undergrad, so the way that I found myself, the journey that I took to go from that to ABS reporter is a conversation for another time, but I agree. I don't think most people even know that it is a beat that exists unless you're deep into the finance world.

Exactly.

And we won't, for the purpose of this, get too into the weeds. But in terms of GlobalCapital, can you tell me a little bit about the business model and how that's different from other publications?

So I don't know how different we are in terms of the business model. We want to sell lots of subscriptions to people who want to read us, and they're generally specialists in the industry. In the case of GlobalCapital, that's capital markets. So anything that pays an interest rate pretty much is interesting to us, whether that's a straightforward bond or a structured product of some kind.

I think the thing that makes GlobalCapital unique is we want to tell the story behind the deal. We try to have fun when we're writing. You'll see plenty of puns in GlobalCapital's headlines. We like to think we set the agenda a bit. So we're talking to the sell side, we're talking to the buy side, which for those who are unaware or unfamiliar with those terms, it's the bankers who are arranging the deal and the issuers who are issuing the deal, but also the investors that are buying the deal.

We like to think, I think, that in the European bond markets, we're there. You kind of have to read us. If you want to know what's going on in European bonds, then we're the place to be. And we're sort of trying to do the same in US securitization, which is a bit of a monster. And we're gradually getting there.

I think the fun thing about GlobalCapital for a journalist and also for a reader is the variety of pieces. We have opinion pieces, we have an agony aunt for capital markets professionals. We have cartoons, which are very popular. We have a cartoonist, Olly Copplestone, who's been working with us for longer than I've been there, who manages to take a 10-year bond from a German bank and turn it into a literal piece of art.

We just had a Blackstone CMBS get a deal cartoon. And they're really cool. And one of the best things is going to visit contact and seeing that they've printed out a GlobalCapital cartoon on there and got it hanging on their wall.

So I guess we're a little bit irreverent, I'd say, is perhaps what defines us versus other trade publications.

Do you still have a print edition or only online?

We don't. Unfortunately, that died with the pandemic. But we did have a weekly until March 2020.

Well, even though GlobalCapital was my competition when I was at Debtwire, I'm unaware of any of that because I could never get my hands on a printed edition or see a copy of GlobalCapital. So kudos to your paywall. But given you have that tough and penetrable paywall, why should PR professionals still pitch to GlobalCapital and want to have its sources in your publication?

And that sounds terrible, the way that I ask that, because I have deep solidarity as someone that also had their work behind a paywall.

I think there's a couple of ways to look at it. One is getting your name out there. Although we do have a paywall, we are read by the people that matter in an industry. And I think appearing in GlobalCapital gives you a sort of level of credibility that you are a senior figure in an industry.

And ultimately, most of the people who care, for example, about asset-backed securities or who care about Latin American bonds are people who work in those industries. And that's who you can access with. I guess that's kind of the readership that you can appear in front of if you're in GlobalCapital.

I would say it's not the most impenetrable paywall of all the trade publications. We do have our opinion pieces in front of the paywall. We do have special reports that we put in front of the paywall. We have a podcast of our own.

And there are teasers. So you can see our homepage, which some of my rivals you literally have no idea what they're writing about, which is interesting. And I would say we're also very big on LinkedIn and tagging people we've spoken to. We find that generates discussion.

So I don't think we're unnecessarily secretive. The other thing, of course, and I think this is maybe where it's even harder as a journalist to persuade a PR to get their client in front of me, is that the majority of our chats with sources are on background. Very rarely have I been told, like, an absolute diamond piece of information on the record.

On the record, yeah.

The best info is stuff that we're not supposed to know. And I'm kind of curious to know your thoughts as someone who's been on both sides of that equation. My parents often ask me, “Why on earth do these people talk to you?”

If I'm working from one of their flats, if I'm back in London, they'll hear me chatting about a bond deal with some banker in Brazil and they're like, “I don't understand. Why does this person tell you these things?” And I think it takes a bit of thinking about, to be frank.

I will say, well, one, a funny story was I had a very good source of mine that I always put on background because he gave me the stuff that I wasn't supposed to know. I thought it was doing him a favor, keeping his name out of it. And one day he said to me, “Wouldn't it be nice if we could get some publicity out of this relationship?” And I was like, “Oh, right. You want something from this.”

You want something.

Yeah. You're not just helping me out of the goodness of your heart. So it is interesting to keep that in mind.

And one thing that we do tell clients on this side is that if you do choose to go on background, first of all, know what that means. It is different from off the record. And we don't have to get into that here.

But if you choose to go off background, what are you going to get out of it? Ask the reporter questions, see what they know. What are they going to share with you that maybe your competition told them? And they'll tell you on background. So it's kind of a give and take if you're going to have that relationship with them.

Yeah, I'd say that's exactly it.

And so as I thought about it, I think in some way, I mean, for example, if a banker starts telling us stuff about the deal they've just done or a deal that their rivals have done, there is no way on earth they can be on record because no banker is going to slag off their client's deal on the record, whether they run it or not, or really wants to be seen to be giving high praise to their rivals.

I'm still not really clear on what exactly bankers are allowed to tell me about the deals that they've just priced. But there's also compliance concerns that people have. I think what's in it for them is in some ways a way of ensuring that their side of the story is out there.

So if you have an ABS deal that just performs terribly in the secondary market, for example, and people accuse it of being mispriced or they got the structure wrong or whatever, or they went to the wrong investors, people probably talk about that freely when they're not on the deal. And if you're on the deal, you kind of want to make sure that your side of the story is out there. But you really can't do that on the record.

And I mean, that's quite a dramatic example, but usually it's just like, I think, people want to feel like they're setting the tone a bit. And you're very aware when people are talking about their own book, which is good and bad. It can be good because people can really go into detail about stuff. And it's a really interesting perspective. You just as a journalist have to be aware of like, does this guy say he thinks this is the best bond in the world because he owns like half a billion dollars of it?

He’s got a vested interest, yeah.

So I think on one hand, it's that there's also the sort of, as you say, an exchange of information. I think people sort of find it useful to talk to journalists.

We have a bit of a unique spot in the market. Who else talks to issuers, bankers, investors, law firms, rating agencies? And have these people speak to them in a completely unencumbered position? If you're a banker talking to an investor or a client, there's some things you're allowed to say and not allowed to say. Whereas when they talk to me, there's really not much stopping them. And I think after a while they start to enjoy it.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

It's quite a nice feeling to feel like someone's coming to you as an expert. So I think it kind of ranges. But very much ultimately the press is going to be there, whether you like it or not. And a lot of people in securitization especially would probably prefer we don't exist.

But as long as people are happy to pay subscriptions to read us, then we will. And so you can either choose to engage or not. And I don't think that people who engage wouldn't have ever lost anything. It's not like we're asking for hours and hours of their time. It's just maintaining a dialogue.

So, I mean, I think if people are writing about you, why would you not want to be in touch talking to them?

And have your side of the story out there.

And have your side of the story out there and know what they're going to write about and know what they're thinking, what they're hearing from peers.

And the other thing, of course, is we have awards. So we have Bond Awards in Europe. We have a Latin American Bond Awards in New York. And we have European securitization awards and US securitization awards.

And it's amazing to see how people's attitudes towards you change when it's award season. And I mean, you can't buy an award by giving us information. But if we're in touch, if we've been following your deals and you pitch a deal and you can give me a good explanation of why that was an important deal, then it's more likely to get picked.

And again, most of our awards are done by polls in the market. If you're engaged with us, you're more likely to know when the polls are opening and how things work. And you're more, I guess—

The process.

Sort of in the process. And you're more likely to find people voting for you, I think.

Right. Well, that is just the big picture. How are people supposed to find you if they don't know you exist? And that's part of the reason you talk to the press, too.

Exactly.

So, yeah, I mean, after quite a few years of thinking about this, because my dad asks me every time I go home, I think that's kind of my answer.

Sure. No problem.

Why do people talk to me? And also, I don't know, after a while, you just talk about football and beer and holidays and family. And then after 20 minutes, you get onto—

The one question you really need to ask them. Right. Yeah.

And I do think they enjoy it, especially when you have a source that you've known for a while, because when you're this specialized, you don't have to start with the basics. You don't have to worry that they don't know what happened in the last deal or the history of the issuer. You can just dive right in and kind of talk about what your world is. So I do think that it helps to speak to a reporter that is that specialized.

Yeah. And I mean, I'd say that in securitization, because there's this like still PTSD from the financial crisis, because mortgage-backed securities are ultimately at the center of—

Crash.

The crash.

Yeah, economy.

And securitization had a hard time in the media. Some of it is probably justified.

There’s a stigma.

There's a stigma. And we are so over that. We are going into securitization because we like securitization. We think it's a great industry, which is why you want to cover it.

And I think if you're talking to someone who's just a broader financial journalist, you may find they have a sort of natural hostility towards you in just talking about the case of securitization. They might not really understand what you're doing. And what sounds like dubious financial engineering to them, they may write up badly.

Whereas I think people quite enjoy talking to someone who knows what they're talking about. And it's not that we're on their side

You have perspective, yeah.

We don't want the industry to crash. We want to say what's good and what's bad.

You want to demystify it.

Yeah. And if there's a cool deal, then we'll say it's a cool deal and you'll probably get a nice cartoon.

Yeah. It kind of broadly leads to my next question. When we talk about broader markets and broader coverage, you and I chatted a little bit before we sat down to do this about trade media. And I'm very happy as a former trade reporter that you wanted to discuss this.

But can you walk us through a little bit of the difference between trade media coverage, mainstream media and give us your thoughts on the value of trades? We might have touched on a lot of that before.

Yeah. I mean, I guess the key difference is the audience and why someone’s reading it. Probably if someone's reading the trade media, the ultimate reason that they're doing so is for their bottom line.

If you read GlobalCapital and you're in the bond markets, it's because you want to be better informed about the bond markets so that you can either draw up more business so that in your next deal, if you're an issuer, you have a better view of what's going on and you can make a better decision.

Same goes for an investor. If you're a law firm, you need to know what the big topics of the day are and what people think so that when you're pitching for business, you feel better informed, right?

I feel like the ultimate aim of trade media is to be in someone's workflow and sort of be part of their decision making process. And it's kind of quite a nice, cool, powerful thing to realize when someone tells you, “Oh, yeah, we read about this. And therefore, I was talking to my boss about this and we think this helped him build a case to go into this asset class or whatever.” That's a cool thing.

The mainstream media, I guess the big difference is people are reading it because they're just generally interested.

Right. Yeah. It goes back to, I guess, what you were saying before, which is, your audience are the peers of the people that are in your stories.

Yes.

And perhaps the buyers. Yeah. Whereas mainstream, I feel like it's more potentially everyday man that is just interested in market activity.

Almost every single reader of GlobalCapital probably could be a useful contact for me.

Probably.

Like, if you're reading GlobalCapital, I want to talk to you because you probably have thoughts on what I'm doing and what is going on in the market. Whereas I don't think the editor of the FT really cares what I think about the market crash.

So I guess that's the thing. And that really changes what we're interested in. Especially, this week, the bottom's falling out of the stock market. It's very easy for a journalist at GlobalCapital or another trade publication to be like, “Well, the market's collapsing. This is terrible for ABS. So I need to write about the market collapsing.”

And I guess the message I always have for my reporters is: That's great. But why does it matter for ABS? Don't tell me that the S&P had its worst day in two years because you can read that anywhere. And no one's reading GlobalCapital for you to tell them that, right? They're reading us because we can say why that matters to ABS, what people are doing in the ABS market to react to this, and what this means for the pipeline of new issues.

I get a lot of broad pitches from PRs about someone who wants to talk about the US economy. The US economy matters, obviously, to the ABS market, to all financial markets. But if your expertise is making forecasts on the US economy, you probably are of no use to me, unless you're doing it purely through an ABS lens or a bond market lens.

The level of things that we care about is sort of quite insane sometimes. Like, I do care how oversubscribed one tranche of one ABS deal was, which I think even some people in the market don't care.

Right, yeah. Or the upsizing of a deal and why. Yeah.

Well, taking a little bit of a step back, but speaking of the people that you may or may not care about, PR individuals. I know for what you do and your reporters do, it's such a relationship business, meaning you're growing those deep source relationships. But do you accept pitches from PR individuals? And if so, what gets your attention in a pitch?

We, I mean, definitely accept pitches if they're relevant. I've got nothing against that. What gets my attention is that they understand what we're looking for. And that's quite hard because there aren't that many journalists out there who are looking for the same things that we're looking for.

We were just chatting earlier about the ABS market is a field, for the size of it, is extremely under covered on.

Under reported on, yeah.

Under reported on. And I guess as a PR, you can't tailor every single pitch to each journalist. But anything that sort of—I sound like a banker now—bespoke, a bespoke solution, as they say, like the bankers say.

If you have someone who really wants to talk about why Latin American corporate bonds could react extremely well to the US election, for example, then great. Bring them to me. If you have someone who wants to tell me that the US election is good or bad for emerging markets, it may be interesting, but it may not. So I think someone who really understands the level of detail that we want.

Personally, maybe because it's quite hard to come up with these specific pitches, I love PR pitches that are just like, “This person works on what you cover. Would you like to chat about things that are interesting?”

To the point.

Rather than trying to say, “We need to talk about these four bullet points.”

Because we're journalists and the news changes day to day. And I think when people say things like, “We're going to have a chat in two weeks with our client. Could you send some ideas of topics that you're writing about?” It's a guaranteed way to—

More work for you, yeah.

Make my replies slow. Because I don't know what I'm going to be writing about in two and a half weeks.

Of course, yeah.

And those kinds of big picture topics are rarely—yeah, I don't know. I think the more specialized, the better, I guess.

Yeah. It sounds like a combination of a true understanding of what you report, meaning they're not going to send you a pitch on the equities market just because you're a financial reporter. Understanding what it is your reporters do and then just kind of getting to the point.

Yeah. And I ignore quite a few along those lines.

Once you know someone and you're like, you know, whenever I've hung out with PRs, I'm just like, “Tell me which of your clients invest in, for example, emerging markets debt.” Because if they do, then they probably have something to say to me. If they invest in emerging markets equity, then I'm sorry. Even though that's very close and very correlated, I'd quite like to have a beer with them and talk about Brazil, I just don't go for that.

And I think it's because we are so specialized, it's a challenge. But someone who understands it is extremely valuable and understands the nature of background conversations, the fact that we're more than happy to chat in a relaxed manner.

So I don't want to get too in the weeds about ABS. And I know that LATAM bonds is your baby. But I did want to say I feel like just from conversations I've been hearing recently, whether it's through clients, whether it's through other reporters, ABS is kind of having a moment. My old antenna kind of perks up when I hear ABS come up in conversation more. So I just wanted to get your idea of what's going on in the ABS markets that's maybe making it more attractive right now.

Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I believe it was the biggest first half of issuance ever, which is pretty curious, I think, given the interest rates are elevated and you kind of assume that in a high interest rate environment, issuance wouldn't be as high.

But I think it just speaks to how ABS works in some ways. After many years, it's just proven itself. And I don't want to give bankers too much of a slap on the back and a ‘well done’ for having come up with this great…

Product.

Product. It's worked for issuers because it's a way of financing yourself very cheaply and in an efficient way. And for investors, it's proven to be quite lucrative. Losses are pretty low. You buy bonds that are similarly rated to corporate bonds with a significant pickup and yield. So kind of what's not to love?

And I wonder if it's kind of on two sides, this coming into the why is it having a moment? One is this realization from issuers that they can use their assets to fund themselves better, which I think brings in also private credit and what they call asset-backed finance, which is kind of like an ABS but a loan, I guess, from an institutional investor. When rates are high, why wouldn't you do everything you can to have a more efficient capital structure and ABS seems to work?

And then also, as ridiculous as it sounds, 15 years after the financial crisis, it's still a gradual shaking off of the bad sort of reputation. And I wonder if that's just still happening. And gradually people are realizing that it's a good place to park your money.

I guess that would be kind of my assumption. There's a lot of technical stuff to do with the yield curve and why you'd want to buy one and two year bonds, which a lot of ABS is and it's quite hard to buy credit for one or two years.

But yeah, I mean, it just seems to have gradually proven itself. It's a complicated beast. It's very, very hard to understand and explain to people who aren't experts.

So if you're just deciding where to chuck your money as an allocator and you're told for an extra small amount, then I can go to this really complex thing. You might just think, is it really worth training myself up, hiring people? Which means that those people that do take the effort, make the effort kind of in a good position.

I don't know. That would be my assumption without trying to be a sort of ABS—

A forecaster, yeah.

Well, this has been wonderful, probably most selfishly for me, because it's been great to talk about all of this again and you've given us a lot of your time. So I just want to ask you one more question. I always like to ask a hopefully fun question to end things out.

So I was curious, what is the worst pitch that you've ever received and what were you covering at the time that you received that pitch?

I didn't come up with anything.

They've all been great.

The worst pitch I had.

Or maybe I'll ask this then, since no bad ones come to mind, which sounds good for us PR professionals.

I mean, there are loads of bad, but I just delete them.

Delete them from your mind.

I haven't had anyone come up to me with something insanely ludicrous. It's more like, “Sorry, it's not my beat, I'm moving on.”

So I guess I'll ask, what's the most common mistake you see then? Is it having someone's name in there that's not yours, so they clearly sent it to somebody and forwarded on to you? I saw that a lot. Or is it really just really missing the mark on what you'd cover?

From PRs?

Uh-huh.

I'm sorry to give such bland answers, but it's basically when you can just see that you're part of a bulk email.

Either there's no name and it just says hi.

Yeah. Because you've clearly just found every journalist with the word finance in their title and sent me something about, like, crypto in Uzbekistan. I don't know. Yeah, I should remember some of the worst ones I've had.

The ones where I'm like, what is the PR doing, is when I've had—which is maybe not the PR's fault. And I've had a few where I get an email from a PR saying, “Hey, I've got this client, he wants to talk about the markets and this and you cover that.” And I'm like, “Well, he's kind of broadly in my wheelhouse, so sure.” And I've had calls where they basically won't answer any questions, where they're just like, “I can't talk about that, I can't talk about this.”

I think so, and I could be guessing, but I think what I've seen is sometimes maybe this thought of it might not be perfect, but I might as well try. Not realizing that could maybe damage things because then maybe they don't read your next pitch because they knew you got it wrong the first time. So it's this misconception of like, what harm could it do? It's closely related. Let's see what their response is.

Yeah. I mean, I do think if you have a nailed on idea and you think this is going to land with this journalist and then just call, pick up the phone. I mean, I say this to my reporters, “Don't tell me that no one's replied to your emails. Just call them.”

And I mean, I know from when I receive emails versus calls, if someone calls me and I miss a call, I will feel sort of morally obligated to call them back.

Oh, okay. Interesting.

If I get an email, even if I think I should reply, I'll probably get pinned to the top of my inbox. If it's not important, it might take ages.

But if I get two, three calls from someone and then an email to follow up, I'm like, “Okay. It's not a spam call. This is actually someone who wants to talk to me.” Then I’ll probably just out of courtesy at least call you back. So, I mean, I do think that that goes for journalists and PRs. And I have some sympathy with PRs because I think—

Thank you.

In some ways, the challenges that we have are similar. Getting people to pay attention to you and feel like you are important because I think we both are. And so, yeah, maybe that sort of advice could apply to both, to pick up the phone.

I don't think many reporters are so slammed that they haven't got 30 seconds to just talk to you. Maybe there are lots more busy reporters out there than me.

But you spend a bit of time writing, reading, especially these days. I feel like the modus operandi has changed a bit with the pandemic, where in the old days when we were all in the office, everyone would just go in, be on the phone for four hours and try to write as much as they could.

And now people want to do Teams calls and they want things set up in advance. And that requires them finding a half-an-hour space in their diary. So things take longer. And I kind of miss just phones, calls, speed.

So I'm sorry I don't have any funny stories. I'm trying to think.

No, that's all right. That bodes well for us then.

But all of this has been, as I said, so wonderful to kind of almost, it’s like going down memory lane for me. So this has been a great conversation. And thank you so much for coming in and doing it in person. And I hope you come back.

Thanks for having me. I'd love to.