CEO & Co-Founder, Libremax Capital
Search every verified Greg Lippmann interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Greg Lippmann, CEO and co-founder of LibreMax Capital, has discussed the current opportunities in structured credit, describing the market environment as favorable for structured products. In a December 2024 appearance on the podcast "Beyond 60/40," Lippmann stated that commercial real estate challenges, particularly in office space, are "in the price" and that the consumer sector is resilient, noting that 80% of U.S. mortgages have rates of 5% or lower. He also said that if unemployment remains low, defaults on securitizations will stay low, and he predicted that the next recession would be "led by the corporate sector." Lippmann described his firm's portfolio yield as being in the "low double digits." In earlier interviews, Lippmann has emphasized that his firm is not focused on finding a "next Big Short" trade, but rather on constructing a portfolio that generates returns while surviving market corrections. He has stated that structured products are unlikely to be the epicenter of a future crisis, arguing that consumers are less leveraged than before the 2008 financial crisis while corporates are more leveraged. Lippmann has also noted that higher interest rates benefit his firm's strategy, as two-thirds of its portfolio is floating rate and purchased at a discount. He has described structured-products investing as a data-intensive business that requires significant spending on analytics and scale.
“Structured products are super important for the financing of Americans. If you have a car loan or a mortgage, or you have credit card debt, almost certainly that debt is in some securitization.”
“The capital charges compared to before the great financial crisis are two and a half to five times higher than they were before. And so, that means there's permanently less demand for the product.”
“Our portfolio yield is in the low double digits.”
“Today, 95% of the mortgages in this country are fixed rate. 66% of Americans own their own home. 80% of the mortgages in America are 5% or lower today.”
“When you think about a bank, the whole point of a bank is they pay people less for their deposits than they charge people to borrow. And it's the key reason why we haven't had a recession yet, is because US consumer is very resilient.”
“When we go into the next recession... it's gonna be led by the corporate sector.”
“If unemployment stays low, defaults on these securitizations are gonna stay low and they're gonna be resilient.”
“Everybody knows that commercial real estate is a problem, that work from home is gonna be a part of reality forever. That's not a secret, and that's in the price.”
“Real estate is local. The best real estate is totally fine, the middle real estate is being buffeted to an extent, and the sort of B/C quality buildings are getting really hurt very, very badly.”
“Unlike equities, where all the information is free, in our space virtually all of it costs money. So not only do you have to pay for the data, but we have to hire people that can do things with that data.”
“We broke America into quartiles at a zip-code level and looked at defaults: the top 25% by home-price appreciation made up about 62% of bond balance yet still had six to seven percent default after six years, while the bottom quartile had roughly 28% default and 50–55 cents of loss recovery — and these bonds were payin...”
“We put the short on in late 2005; 2006 was a year where the 'voting machine' won and prices didn't reflect deteriorating fundamentals, and only around February 2007 did prices start to move and the trade begin to work.”
“We use computer models and AI to quickly sift through loans and identify candidates, but we're not a quant shop — machines point out five bonds, and then humans do the detailed underwriting and decide which to pursue.”
“There are lots of situations where banks do things for non-economic reasons — capital charges or aged-inventory penalties — so it's cheaper for them to sell assets cheaply; we position ourselves with relationships and speed to buy those assets and act as a liquidity provider.”
“I'm pretty excited about securitized products today, but what worries me is a world where the Fed props up financial markets while the real economy weakens — if unemployment soars and the stock market still goes up, that would be bad for our strategy.”
On the latest episode of Beyond 60/40, Anastasia Amoroso explores structured credit and the higher-for-longer rates, particularly ...
Greg Lippmann is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of LibreMax, an $8 billion asset management firm specializing in ...
May.02 -- Libremax Capital LLC CIO and Portfolio Manager Greg Lippmann discusses finding the next big "big short," and talks about his investment strategies. He speaks with Erik Schatzker at the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.
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