Blog Post
Octus on Credit: From TLB to LME – First Brands and Deal Terms
Ian Chin, Global Head of Covenants Data & Analytics
First Brands launched a new TLB in one quarter—then collapsed into distress the next. For lenders scrambling to assess covenant terms on the way in and LME options on the way out, speed wasn’t a luxury. It was everything.
The First Brands story may be extreme, but the lesson isn’t: covenant intelligence can’t wait. Whether you’re negotiating a new deal, benchmarking market terms, managing a portfolio, or navigating a workout, you need answers fast.
That’s why we built two new tools designed to work in tandem:
CovenantAI provides a single intelligent interface for interacting with everything covenants, providing fast answers to complex questions. Ask it anything—from whether Merlin’s docs include LME protections to how to draft a J.Crew blocker or push back on an anti-cooperation clause. Built by our market-leading legal team and powered by agentic AI, it delivers complex answers in seconds.
Deal Lens is our new structured covenants database for deeper analysis. Combining AI extraction with human expertise, it gives you comparable, standardized covenant data across the market. Users can benchmark terms, analyze investments, or pull data directly via API for portfolio management and research workflows.
Together, they’re an ecosystem for faster, smarter covenant work—from first look to final negotiation.
Click here to learn more or reach out to discuss how these tools fit into your workflow.
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