A Japanese agricultural bank is planning to resume its purchases of bundled leveraged loans in the U.S. and Europe, after pausing last year when U.K. pension funds were dumping their holdings, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Norinchukin Bank is talking to money managers that package loans into bonds known as collateralized loan obligations, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the transactions are private. The bank, also known as Nochu, was once one of the biggest CLO buyers in the world, and is looking at resuming purchases in the coming months.

Its return to the market would be a positive for money managers that struggled to find buyers for CLOs in the second half of last year. Nochu buys the safest tranches of CLOs, those rated AAA, and is often a key player in ensuring that sales get done. Its recent absence was one reason that issuance of U.S. CLOs fell about 30% in 2022.