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Mount Logan Capital Inc. Letter to Shareholders

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Toronto, Ontario–(Newsfile Corp. – May 11, 2020) – In response to the continued uncertainty and unprecedented impact that the COVID-19 global pandemic is having on both the financial markets and economies around the world, Mount Logan Capital Inc. (NEO: MLC) (“Mount Logan” or the “Company”) is providing an update to all of our stakeholders. As always, but especially in times like these, we hope all our stakeholders, including shareholders, lenders, portfolio companies, and advisors, are healthy and safe. Please note that we continue to vigilantly monitor this continually evolving situation and have implemented steps to keep our team safe while ensuring full business continuity. All amounts in this letter are stated in United States dollars, unless otherwise indicated.

While we anticipate a challenging economic climate in the coming quarters, we believe stakeholders should take comfort in the ability of Mount Logan’s management team to navigate a period of dislocation and stress such as this. Additionally, while the current market conditions are not something that could have been predicted or anticipated, economic cycles and capital markets dislocations have always existed and will continue to exist even after the economy has recovered from the effects of COVID-19. Our credit investment organization was built, and its investment professionals hired, to invest across all economic and credit market cycles. Senior members of Mount Logan’s management team have experience managing assets through multiple credit cycles at best-in-class institutions.

In addition to our management team, we believe Mount Logan is well-positioned to face the current period of uncertainty for the following three key reasons:

  1. Diversified Portfolio

  2. Defensive Sectors

  3. Liquidity, Funding Profile, and Capital

Diversified Portfolio1

As of March 31, 2020, our investment portfolio consisted of 16 unique investments and an average exposure per borrower of $3.1 million (based on March 31, 2020 fair market value, excluding our investment in the BCP Great Lakes Unitranche Joint Venture). All of our borrowers have paid their interest and principal that was due as of March 31, 2020. Our portfolio remains heavily concentrated in first lien senior secured debt. As of March 31, 2020, approximately 80% of our portfolio (based on March 31, 2020 fair market value) consisted of first lien senior secured debt. We have purposely constructed our portfolio to focus on first dollar risk precisely to be positioned well when times of economic stress do arise.

With respect to our exposure to the BCP Great Lakes Unitranche Joint Venture, this represents approximately 14% of our portfolio (based on March 31, 2020 fair market value). This exposure is underpinned by a portfolio of first lien senior secured unitranche loans, diversified across 11 middle market borrowers in a variety of stable industries. Taken together, as at March 31, 2020, approximately 94% of our portfolio (based on fair market value) is in first lien senior secured debt and in our joint venture underpinned by first lien debt.

Defensive Sectors

While the long-term impacts remain uncertain, it is important to note that Mount Logan has no direct exposure to most of the sectors that will or are expected to face immediate impacts. Excluding Cline, which we had previously structured as a contingent value right and hence involves no net balance sheet exposure, we do not have direct exposure to sectors such as automotive, energy, metals and mining, hotel, casinos and leisure, advertising, restaurants, airlines, and cruise lines. Based on fair market value as of March 31, 2020, our largest sectors of exposure are industrials, representing approximately 27% of our investment portfolio, and consumer, representing approximately 20% of our investment portfolio. Amongst the investments in these respective sectors, each investment has diversified exposure to a variety of end-markets and was underwritten with the aim of enduring severe economic stress.

Liquidity, Funding Profile, and Capital

With the renewal of Mount Logan’s Revolving Senior Loan Facility (the “Leverage Facility”) in January 2020, our $50 million Leverage Facility now matures in February 2021. While certain peers have faced issues with their leverage facility providers, we are pleased with the terms and flexibility of our existing Leverage Facility. As of March 31, 2020, Mount Logan has drawn $34.4 million on the Leverage Facility and the remaining $15.6 million of potential borrowing capacity could be accessed upon the Company meeting certain borrowing base requirements. As of March 31, 2020, we had approximately $8.9 million of cash, a majority of which is committed to supporting the borrowing base for our Leverage Facility. As previously reported, we declared a CAD$0.02 dividend per share that was paid on April 28, 2020, and on May 11, 2020, we declared another dividend of CAD$0.02 per share to be paid in June 2020. We remain focused on balancing adequate liquidity for our ongoing company operations while also deploying capital in attractive investment opportunities that have been created as a result of the market dislocation.

With respect to unfunded commitments in our portfolio, as of March 31, 2020, we had limited exposure with approximately $2.9 million of unfunded commitments, none of which are revolving credit facilities. Approximately $1.0 million of that exposure consists of delayed draw first lien term loans to three separate portfolio companies and approximately $2.0 million is an unfunded commitment to the BCP Great Lakes Unitranche Joint Venture. Across all of the unfunded commitments to which we have exposure, there are restrictions on the underlying companies’ ability to fund driven by leverage levels at the underlying borrowers and the use of proceeds. Overall, we believe that the various restrictions in our unfunded commitments will result in very limited demands of unilateral funding by our portfolio companies and if they do fund, we believe that we have adequate liquidity and assets in order to meet any such requirements. Overall, we are proud that Mount Logan’s existing structure and permanent capital enabled us to continue to hold our investments and did not force us to sell any investments at a material discount to par when the dislocation began in March 2020.

Conclusion

We will continue to remain vigilant around monitoring our existing investments, and we will continue to actively evaluate additional new investments that present an immense opportunity amid the recent market volatility. While we understand and appreciate that the long-term impacts of COVID-19 are uncertain, we believe that Mount Logan’s investment portfolio and balance sheet are positioned defensively and that our management team will continue to take steps to protect stakeholder value and continue to drive value through opportunistically deploying capital in the current environment. We will continue to work hard for all our stakeholders and look forward to maintaining our dialogue with you during this period.

On behalf of our entire team, thank you for your support and please stay safe and healthy.

Sincerely,

Ted Goldthorpe

Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

About Mount Logan Capital Inc.

Mount Logan Capital Inc. is a Canada-based asset manager created to source and execute on credit investment opportunities in North America. The Company holds and actively manages and monitors a portfolio of loans and other investments with credit-oriented characteristics. The Company intends to actively source, evaluate, underwrite, monitor, and primarily invest in additional loans, debt securities, and other credit-oriented instruments that present attractive risk-adjusted returns and present low risk of principal impairment through the credit cycle.

Cautionary Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the expressions “seeks”, “expects”, “believes”, “estimates”, “will”, “target” and similar expressions. The forward-looking statements are not historical facts, but reflect the current expectations of the Company regarding future results or events and are based on information currently available to them. Certain material factors and assumptions were applied in providing these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements discussed in this release include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the Company’s business strategy, model, approach and future activities; its future investment portfolio construction and concentration; future funding demands and ability to meet such demands; any future dividends on the Company’s shares; and the Company’s ability to deliver returns to shareholders. All forward-looking statements in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions; however, the Company can give no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized by certain specified dates or at all. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations, including the matters discussed under “Risks Factors” in the most recently filed annual information form and management discussion and analysis for the Company. Readers, therefore, should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Further, a forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any such statement or to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances except as required by securities laws. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release.

This press release is not, and under no circumstances is it to be construed as, a prospectus or an advertisement and the communication of this release is not, and under no circumstances is it to be construed as, an offer to sell or an offer to purchase any securities in the Company or in any fund or other investment vehicle.

For additional information, contact:

Ted Gilpin
Chief Financial Officer
[email protected]
(212) 891-5007

Mount Logan Capital Inc.
365 Bay Street, Suite 800
Toronto, ON M5H 2V1


1 All figures exclude the Company’s legacy investment in Cline Mining Corporation (“Cline”), which is subject to the contingent value rights issued by the Company to the holders of the common shares of the Company prior to its plan of arrangement completed in October 2018.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55702

Fintech

Central banks and the FinTech sector unite to change global payments space

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The BIS, along with seven leading central banks and a cohort of private financial firms, has embarked on an ambitious venture known as Project Agorá.

Named after the Greek word for “marketplace,” this initiative stands at the forefront of exploring the potential of tokenisation to significantly enhance the operational efficiency of the monetary system worldwide.

Central to this pioneering project are the Bank of France (on behalf of the Eurosystem), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These institutions have joined forces under the banner of Project Agorá, in partnership with an extensive assembly of private financial entities convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF).

At the heart of Project Agorá is the pursuit of integrating tokenised commercial bank deposits with tokenised wholesale central bank money within a unified, public-private programmable financial platform. By harnessing the advanced capabilities of smart contracts and programmability, the project aspires to unlock new transactional possibilities that were previously infeasible or impractical, thereby fostering novel opportunities that could benefit businesses and consumers alike.

The collaborative effort seeks to address and surmount a variety of structural inefficiencies that currently plague cross-border payments. These challenges include disparate legal, regulatory, and technical standards; varying operating hours and time zones; and the heightened complexity associated with conducting financial integrity checks (such as anti-money laundering and customer verification procedures), which are often redundantly executed across multiple stages of a single transaction due to the involvement of several intermediaries.

As a beacon of experimental and exploratory projects, the BIS Innovation Hub is committed to delivering public goods to the global central banking community through initiatives like Project Agorá. In line with this mission, the BIS will soon issue a call for expressions of interest from private financial institutions eager to contribute to this ground-breaking project. The IIF will facilitate the involvement of private sector participants, extending an invitation to regulated financial institutions representing each of the seven aforementioned currencies to partake in this transformative endeavour.

Source: fintech.globa

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TD Bank inks multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud

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TD Bank has inked a multi-year deal with Google Cloud as it looks to streamline the development and deployment of new products and services.

The deal will see the Canadian banking group integrate the vendor’s cloud services into a wider portion of its technology solutions portfolio, a move which TD expects will enable it “to respond quickly to changing customer expectations by rolling out new features, updates, or entirely new financial products at an accelerated pace”.

This marks an expansion of the already established relationship between TD Bank and Google Cloud after the group previously adopted the vendor’s Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for TD Securities Automated Trading (TDSAT), the Chicago-based subsidiary of its investment banking unit, TD Securities.

TDSAT uses GKE for process automation and quantitative modelling across fixed income markets, resulting in the development of a “data-driven research platform” capable of processing large research workloads in trading.

Dan Bosman, SVP and CIO of TD Securities, claims the infrastructure has so far supported TDSAT with “compute-intensive quantitative analysis” while expanding the subsidiary’s “trading volumes and portfolio size”.

TD’s new partnership with Google Cloud will see the group attempt to replicate the same level of success across its entire portfolio.

Source: fintechfutures.com

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MAS launches transformative platform to combat money laundering

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The MAS has unveiled Cosmic, an acronym for Collaborative Sharing of Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing Information and Cases, a new money laundering platform.

According to Business Times, launched on April 1, Cosmic stands out as the first centralised digital platform dedicated to combating money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing on a worldwide scale. This move follows the enactment of the Financial Services and Markets (Amendment) Act 2023, which, along with its subsidiary legislation, commenced on the same day to provide a solid legal foundation and safeguards for information sharing among financial institutions (FIs).

Cosmic enables participating FIs to exchange customer information when certain “red flags” indicate potential suspicious activities. The platform’s introduction is a testament to MAS’s commitment to ensuring the integrity of the financial sector, mandating participants to establish stringent policies and operational safeguards to maintain the confidentiality of the shared information. This strategic approach allows for the efficient exchange of intelligence on potential criminal activities while protecting legitimate customers.

Significantly, Cosmic was co-developed by MAS and six leading commercial banks in Singapore—OCBC, UOB, DBS, Citibank, HSBC, and Standard Chartered—which will serve as participant FIs during its initial phase. The initiative emphasizes voluntary information sharing focused on addressing key financial crime risks within the commercial banking sector, such as the misuse of legal persons, trade finance, and proliferation financing.

Loo Siew Yee, assistant managing director for policy, payments, and financial crime at MAS, highlighted that Cosmic enhances the existing collaboration between the industry and law enforcement authorities, fortifying Singapore’s reputation as a well-regulated and trusted financial hub. Similarly, Pua Xiao Wei of Citi Singapore and Loretta Yuen of OCBC have expressed their institutions’ support for Cosmic, noting its potential to ramp up anti-money laundering efforts and its significance as a development in the banking sector’s ability to combat financial crimes efficiently. DBS’ Lam Chee Kin also praised Cosmic as a “game changer,” emphasizing the careful balance between combating financial crime and ensuring legitimate customers’ access to financial services.

Source: fintech.global

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