Ep 267- GLAS CEO and Founder Mia Drennan

**John** (0:05)
Hey, it's the FinTech Newscast. My name is John, and with me as always is Steve. How are you doing?

**Steve** (0:10)
As always, as always. I'm a great John. What's new in the world?

**John** (0:14)
Oh, just worrying about what's gonna happen next. You know, there's not enough risk in the world. So, just seeing that the US might be having one of their little congressional, I think, government shutdown, I believe.

**Steve** (0:30)
Another shutdown. Another shutdown.

**John** (0:32)
Maybe, maybe. It's a whole, oh, we have too much debt. We, ourselves, spent too much money, and now we're protesting ourselves, I guess. But, you know, I was glad to see the front page of the Wall Street Journal today on the website article, it's not just us. Is the UK a canary in the coal mine for a heavily indebted world? I will definitely be reading that, because that's definitely something in the future for everybody.

**Steve** (1:01)
Is it applicable? I think, though, it's a little different, right? If you compare the two economies and the importance of, you know, the influence that each of them have also in the world, it's a bit different.

**John** (1:11)
Oh, a little UK dig, I kind of feel like there.

**Steve** (1:14)
Well, it's not a dig, per se, it's just I think it's just a statement of fact, right?

**John** (1:19)
Yeah, well, it's definitely true for China's debt levels, which are also way up there. But yeah, I haven't, I've been out of the debt world, the fixed income side of things for quite a while, since the old treasury days. But you know, I'm lucky because we do have somebody on the line with us this week that can help us and knows a bit more about that than we do. We're lucky enough to have Mia Drennan, the CEO and founder of GLAS. Welcome to the podcast.

**Mia Drennan** (1:52)
Hi, nice to meet you.

**John** (1:53)
Nice to meet you. So what do you think of all this debt talk? Is it just overblown or are these real concerns that we should be having in the big macroeconomic sense?

**Mia Drennan** (2:08)
Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of talk at the moment. I mean, it's obviously across, I think, all the regions that I'm certainly working in about the amount of government debt that's just increasing. So obviously, and with high rates as well. So I mean, it is a problem.
I, you know, it's good for my business because I'm in restructuring as well as dealing with performance debt. So, yeah, I guess we see. But it's concerning with that headline. I haven't read the article myself yet, but obviously, that has an impact on markets. So I'm not in favor of that.

**John** (2:50)
And GLAS, I should say, stands for Global Loan Agency Services Limited, a GLAS.agency. So you specialize in restructuring. Is there a certain area or industries that you're focused on?

**Mia Drennan** (3:05)
Yeah, I mean, maybe just to give you a bit of context, it might be useful to sort of share a little bit about the origins of the company and how, what we sort of focus on. So, I started this business back in 2011, when there was a lot of broken, leveraged loans in the market, the capital markets, and there was a lack of administrative providers that would help creditors get their money back. So, really, it's on the back of 2008, 2009 And so, what I did was set up a company to go in and replace the commercial banks, and to help creditors get their money back from these broken, leveraged transactions. And so, that continues and has continued for the last 14 years.

**Steve** (3:58)
We're going to hear about how this timing, right, right after the crisis, how did that influence your approach and your strategy?

**Mia Drennan** (4:06)
So, it really was, having left the bank at my last job in a bank some time before that, I was doing some other things, had another business, but really missed being in the heat of a middle of a deal, middle of a transaction as a service provider, so not as an originator. And I've spoken to a lot of clients who had originally been in prop desks and investment banks, that were then sort of involved in these new special situations funds that were getting involved in buying debt and value. And so their issue was that the service they received from the incumbent agents and trustees was pretty poor. And they were sort of 95 They weren't commercial. Computer says no mentality. And I think it was really frustrating because there was no liquidity. And all of those things added up for me to go, I wonder if I could do that. And so I thought I could offer effectively a service, which was based on providing a white glove service to potential clients. And that's how it started.