By Jan-Henrik Foerster
See below for excerpts from a recent Bloomberg feature. For the full article, see here.
Barclays Plc is joining rivals in backing a firm that’s looking to upend the way Wall Street keeps track of corporate loan data.
The UK lender participated in a $26 million capital raise for Versana, a two-year-old platform that allows lenders to access data and information about $2.7 trillion worth of loans in one place, according to a statement. Existing investors including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. also joined in the fundraising.
As part of the deal, Barclays will also provide its agented corporate loan data to Versana, the 10th bank to do so. It’s also the first British bank to join the platform.
Unlike bonds, there’s very little publicly available or standardized information about how loans are structured. Instead, every loan has what’s called an administrative agent, which is supposed to provide lenders and investors updates on things like interest payments or amendments to legal documentation.
