When the housing bubble burst and subprime borrowers went into default at high rates, the CDO market went into a meltdown. This caused many investment banks to either go bankrupt or be bailed out by the government. Despite this, CDOs are still in use by investment banks today. Tom Nicholas and Matthew G.

A single-name CDS references only one security and the credit risk to be transferred in the swap may be very large. In contrast, a synthetic CDO references a portfolio of securities and is sliced into various tranches of risk, with progressively higher levels of risk.

A collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is a complex structured finance product that is backed by a pool of loans and other assets and sold to institutional investors. Essentialy, they are bundled debt resold to to investors.

While the underlying assets of regular CDOs are traditional fixed-income assets, such as loans, mortgages, and bonds, synthetic CDOs use non-cash assets as the underlying asset, such as credit default swaps, options, and other such contracts. Synthetic CDOs typically offer higher yields than traditional CDOs.