Global Liability Management Quarterly: Optimum Lenders Challenge Company’s Transaction; Merlin Entertainments Uses Pari Plus for Refinancing; Aston Martin Moves Assets Away From Secured Lenders; Lai Sun Completes Its Exchange

Americas Credit Research: Jared Muroff, CFA; Johan Pascual Americas Legal Analysis: Kevin Eckhardt; Mitch McVeigh Americas Covenant Analysis: Magnus Wieslander European Credit Research: Kornel Benoit, Rafi Rees European Reporting: Chris Haffenden, Farooq Baloch European Legal Analysis: Bart Capeci, Aditya Khanna, Connor Lovell Asia Credit Research: Junguang Tan In our third-quarter 2026 global quarterly report highlighting our coverage on liability management exercises, or LMEs, used by stressed creditors to partially refinance capital structures, Octus discusses the latest developments in the long-running feud at Optimum Communications, what a potential transaction structure for Mercer International may look like, Merlin Entertainments’ recent pari-plus transaction, Aston Martin’s aggressive drop-down and Lai Sun Development’s completed exchange. This report summarizes the latest trends in liability management, including “aggressive” transactions completed or contemplated by U.S., European and Asian borrowers during the third quarter that, among other things, raise cash, extend maturities or reduce outstanding principal – and sometimes all three. The report concludes with a table summarizing select aggressive U.S. LME transactions covered by Octus during the quarter, which are also now available on Credit Cloud HERE. Aggressive LMEs involving, for example, uptiering and drop-downs have been more common in the U.S. market and were relatively limited in[...]