June 19, 2013 – Valeant Pharmaceuticals International is selling $3.225 billion in a two-part junk bond offering to help it finance its $8.7 billion acquisition of Bausch + Lomb.
June 19, 2013 – Ian Gilday is the new head of origination for collateralized loan obligations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
June 19, 2013 – The proceeds will be used to refinance the firm's existing outstanding $1.5 billion bank facilities.
June 19, 2013 – Calgary, Alberta-based Brookfield plans to use the proceeds to repay existing debt and for general corporate purposes.
June 19, 2013 – Dish offered to buy the company in April for $25.5 billion. It sold $2.6 billion in high yield bonds in anticipation of the deal.
June 13, 2013 – The re-pricing of emerging market assets amid talk of the Federal Reserve ‘tapering’ its bond buying program is poorly timed for corporate borrowers, which are facing a nearly $400 billion wall of debt maturing over the next four years.
June 13, 2013 – Add-on bonds, which are re-openings of existing issues, are pricing so high that investors are unable to be benefit from covenants that force the issuer to repurchase the bonds at a premium to face value when there is a change in the control.
June 13, 2013 – Moody’s has expressed its disappointment that NBCU, which it had considered as a strategic investor, does not view TWCC as a core asset.
June 6, 2013 – DIP financing is coming under fire as part of a broader rethinking of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code by the American Bankruptcy Institute.
June 6, 2013 – Pay-in-kind (PIK) toggle notes are selling at the fastest pace since the financial crisis. That doesn’t mean full-year 2013 issuance will best 2012’s total, however.
June 6, 2013 – Europe's economy may be struggling, but Moody's thinks it's unlikely that bonds backed by non-investment-grade corporate loans will incur any principal losses.
May 30, 2013 – A consultation paper released by the European Banking Authority on May 22 calls into question what had been a common interpretation of the requirement for sponsors to retain a 5% economic interest in these deals.
May 30, 2013 – InterGen is on the market with up to $1.8 billion in refinancing debt in both loans and bonds, but these offerings would be dead in the water if he power generation company’s sponsors hadn’t committed to kick in an additional $700 million of equity.
May 30, 2013 – Global issuance of high yield bonds is running ahead of last year’s pace, but that doesn’t mean 2013 is going to beat the record volume recorded in 2012.
May 23, 2013 – After the financial crisis, it became commonplace for borrowers to agree not to call loans for one year. Recently, however, non-call periods on some loans have shrunk to just six months.
May 23, 2013 – JC Penney Co.’s upsized term loan will provide the retailer with sufficient and much-needed liquidity boost.
May 23, 2013 – Hoyts scored points with its shareholders when it obtained $410 milion in term loans but the deal put it in the hot seat with S&P.
May 16, 2013 – The rating agency said CLO noteholders may have to wait longer to get their principal back.
May 16, 2013 – Emerging markets have reaped the benefit of renewed confidence in the global macro economy and the international thirst for yield, setting new records.
May 16, 2013 – Nearly two-thirds of banks with assets of more than $20 billion say they have lowered pricing on loans to large and middle-market businesses in recent months, while nearly half of lenders reported relaxing loan covenants.
May 9, 2013 – Corporate Europe has learned to love junk bonds. Issuers started to turn to high yield bond financing when the region’s banks pulled back on lending, and the market is slowly opening to ever weaker credits.
May 9, 2013 – Middle-market lender Fifth Street Finance Corp. has made a $110 million acquisition of Healthcare Finance Group LLC (HFG) that will allow it to provide asset-based loans (ABLs) through the target.
May 9, 2013 – Europe’s high yield bond market is still small compared with that of the U.S., but it’s going to catch up fast, according to Kevin Loome, a portfolio manager at Henderson Global Investors.
May 2, 2013 – The first three European collateralized loan obligations to price since the financial crisis were structured to ease investor worries, and their successively tighter spreads suggest that’s happening.
May 2, 2013 – In the first five months of the year, the volume of U.S. loans with a second lien on a company’s assets reached $5.1 billion. That’s an increase of 11% over the same period last year and the highest year-to-date volume since 2007.
May 2, 2013 – J.C. Penney is tapping the leveraged loan market for some much-needed liquidity, but it will have to work fast to turn things around.
April 25, 2013 – Corporate borrowers continue to take advantage of strong demand for loans to re-price existing debt, and this is putting a squeeze on some of the biggest buyers of loans—collateralized loan obligations.
April 25, 2013 – Among 222 private equity-backed bonds surveyed, those issued by companies backed by the 12 most active firms had a lower average covenant quality than even those of less active firms.
April 25, 2013 – The heavily indebted U.S. casino operator’s latest move, the creation of a new entity, is mildly positive for bondholders, though it fails to address the company’s longstanding problems.
April 18, 2013 – Energy Future Holdings has discussed a bankruptcy plan that will see the company hand over most of its equity to senior lenders and wipe out as much as $32 billion in outstanding debt.
April 18, 2013 – Dish Network proposed a merger with Sprin which would see the satellite services company acquire the telecom provider for $25.5 billion. The unsolicited bid will result in a higher price and more debt for the telecom company.
April 11, 2013 – The proposal “reinforces that risk-retention is likely coming for CLOs and a ‘carve-out’ is less likely,” RBS analysts said.
April 11, 2013 – SoftBank, which is just barely investment grade, is in the unusual position of selling $2 billion in a dual-currency bond deal, when it is certain to be downgraded if its uses the proceeds as planned—to finance its $20 billion acquisition of Sprint Nextel.
April 11, 2013 – Loans with weak or non-existent maintenance covenants are playing an increasing role in collateralized loan obligations.
April 4, 2013 – Goldman's launch of a tiny business development company has generally been greeted with suspicion, but the biggest takeaway may be that market for lending to small- and medium-sized companies have become attractive to even the largest players.
April 4, 2013 – With refinancing driving issuance in the first quarter of 2013, U.S. leveraged loan volume hit a quarterly record of $286.6 billion.
April 4, 2013 – High yield bonds lost some of their allure in the first quarter as investors began to fret about an eventual rise in interest rates, though you wouldn’t know it from the record level of new issuance.
March 27, 2013 – The newest guidelines take the place of those issued in April 2001 and apply to bank leveraged lending transactions falling under these agencies’supervision.
March 27, 2013 – Whether the total funding package is more or less than the approximately $18 billion it was originally seeking depends on which new offer the computer maker accepts, if any, But its price tag will almost certainly go up.
March 27, 2013 – Moody’s said the cumulative U.S. corporate cash file grew to $1.45 trillion at the end of December, up 10% from $1.32 trillion at the end of 2011.
March 21, 2013 – The universe of investors in securities that rank below loans and bonds in a borrower’s capital structure has become quite crowded. Some bankers and other players remain skeptical that the mezzanine financing will make a comeback any time soon, however.
March 21, 2013 – Fitch Rating’s latest European leveraged loan chart book looks at issuance and default trends and the imminent problem of refinancing risk.
March 21, 2013 – Companies got to court to try to get money all the time, Chesapeake Energy has to go to court to spend money it had no problem raising.
March 14, 2013 – As welcome as the surge in large leveraged buyouts is for supply-starved junk bond investors, it also presents a hidden risk: thin covenant protections. But this also may represent an even bigger buying opportunity.
March 14, 2013 – The change in the definition of higher-risk assets, specifically leveraged loans, has affected the calculations for the “concentration measure,” possibly increasing the costs of FDIC assessments.
March 14, 2013 – There are parallels between the current state of the high yield bond market and the leveraged loan market of 2007, according to a report issued by Morgan Joseph TriArtisan.
March 7, 2013 – A recent middle-market CLO sponsored by Salus Capital Partnerscan invest more than 20% of its assets in revolvers.
March 7, 2013 – Banks that underwrite deals have to be prepared to hold some of that debt on their books, and that’s going to get tougher as the year goes on. That leads some people to believe there will be more opportunity for some non-traditional lenders.
March 4, 2013 – Smaller banks are understandably wary of jumping back into loan participations following some very bad outcomes during the financial crisis. A number of new businesses are determined to convince community bankers that they are safe.
February 28, 2013 – As private equity firms cast a wider net for deals, they are increasingly bidding for smaller companies. In doing so, they are not only pushing up prices for the small- and mid-sized firms; they are also introducing financing structures more typical of bigger buyouts.
February 28, 2013 – The yield differential between leveraged loans and high yield bonds has been widening recently, reversing the overall trend of the past three years as loans outperform.
February 28, 2013 – The surge in dividend deals that characterized the high yield markets in the fourth quarter of 2012 is over, but its effects on the market remain. Investors’ appetite for risk has not gone anywhere.
February 21, 2013 – Loan re-pricings have not only decreased significantly but issuers have been pulling their re-pricing transactions out of the market after investor pushback.
February 21, 2013 – A new era of M&A may be upon us. The recent spate of large mergers and buyouts promise to bring billions of dollars in leveraged loan and high yield bond new issues, and investors feel confident that the market is not likely to approach the excesses of 2007.
February 21, 2013 – Publisher Reader’s Digest Association is making its second trip through bankruptcy court in over three years.
February 14, 2013 – High yield bond funds have fallen out of favor with investors of late and exchange-traded funds have been among the hardest hit. Interestingly, ETFs are also accounting for a larger proportion of the leveraged loan fund universe.
February 14, 2013 – Spreads on new deals have tightened so much over the past couple of years that the equity holders of older deals are calling them in order to fund new deals more cheaply.
February 14, 2013 – Dell Corp.’s $24.5 billion going private transaction is attracting growing opposition, putting the fate of the biggest leveraged buyout in years in doubt.
February 7, 2013 – Things are starting to look up for Rite Aid Corp., the drugstore chain that has been losing market share and has been burdened by a heavy debt load.
February 7, 2013 – The dollar volume of leveraged loans that changed hands in 2012 was down slightly on the year, but other measures of liquidity, such as the market’s breadth and depth, improved slightly.
February 7, 2013 – The $24.4 billion buyout of Dell Inc. provides a much-needed jolt to the U.S. leveraged loan market, bu it may bode ill for existing creditors, who may have to wait in line behind new creditors to get paid.
January 31, 2013 – The distressed high yield bond and leveraged loan markets are suffering from a lack of supply. But investors are not pulling back and are bullish on their return expectations and signs of future supply are at hand.
January 31, 2013 – The rankings of top CLO managers that have outstanding deals rated by Moody’s Investors Service are still about the same as one year ago.
January 31, 2013 – Groups like BancAlliance, BoeFly and the Ohio Bankers League that pair borrowers with lenders are upbeat about boosting lending activity this year.
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