Beginnings[edit]
The first CDO was issued in 1987 by bankers at now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. for the also now-defunct Imperial Savings Association.[9] During the 1990s the collateral of CDOs was generally corporate and emerging market bonds and bank loans.]After 1998 "multi-sector" CDOs were developed by Prudential Securities, but CDOs remained fairly obscure until after 2000. In 2002 and 2003 CDOs had a setback when rating agencies "were forced to downgrade hundreds" of the securities,[13] but sales of CDOs grew—from $69 billion in 2000 to around $500 billion in 2006. From 2004 through 2007, $1.4 trillion worth of CDOs were issued.
Early CDOs were diversified, and might include everything from aircraft lease-equipment debt, manufactured housing loans, to student loans and credit card debt. The diversification of borrowers in these "multisector CDOs" was a selling point, as it meant that if there was a downturn in one industry like aircraft manufacturing and their loans defaulted, other industries like manufactured housing might be unaffected. Another selling point was that CDOs offered returns that were sometimes 2-3 percentage points higher than corporate bonds with the same credit rating.