I hadn't considered them selling ECN, and agree that would be a home run. I'm somewhat skeptical of that, in the same way I don't like accounting for intangibles on finance companies In all seriousness, I agree completely a financial can deserve a premium to TBV (eg Geico) but I'm uncertain that their origination platform delivers high enough ROEs for it to have much intangible value. Probably the best case would be they find an alt-manager looking to expand or someone looking to build private credit capability who pays up. Anyway, ECN seems like a mix of too hard and not rich enough for me right now.
I'll probably nibble on the DRT debs, as it seems like management wants to get them repaid, which is a surprisingly important factor in credit investing imo. And the spread is very high.
I took a brief look at ACD and sort of like their debs as well, and might add there. Obviously only 11% ytm but I did a deep dive on them years ago and think they do a good job. Recent large write-down not withstanding I think factoring is a reasonably low risk operation. The equity might be the better bet there as it's cheap and a go-private probably pays close to TBV