High Yield Report articles from February 2008

High Yield Report archives from February 2008

Much Pain, Only Some Gain In High Yield.
February 4, 2008... Despite an additional Federal Reserve rate cut that lowered the benchmark federal funds rate to 3% last week, volatility continues to reign in the high yield secondary market. Spreads reflect continued low expectations on the part of investors,...

January Leaves Lev Finance Markets Out In The Cold.
February 4, 2008... For the leveraged finance markets, as for most of us, January represents a fresh start. Typically, investor appetite is strong in the first month of the year, and banks try to cash in by launching new deals. However, with liquidity strained and...

More Lenders DIP Their Toes In Restructuring.(debtor-in-possession)
February 4, 2008... Along with the expected increase in defaults and bankruptcies this year will come a new cycle of restructuring with its own nuances. Nontraditional lenders, such as hedge funds and private equity firms, are increasingly getting into the game...

Now Really Is The Winter Of Our Discontent ...
February 4, 2008... When I was 14, rambunctious and getting into things I shouldn't have been, my father grounded me for an entire holiday season. My sequestering began with a Thanksgiving release date, but I then got into more trouble, and he extended my...

Wachovia Snags Distressed DB Vet To Lead Effort.
February 4, 2008... Wachovia Securities last week said it had tapped Jeremiah Keefe to head up its distressed debt effort. Keefe, working in New York, will answer to Tim Mullins, head of credit sales and trading. The role is a new one at Wachovia, one in which...

Smaller Players See Hiring Opportunity.
February 4, 2008... Anyone who has an older sibling understands the feeling, and it seems a decent analogy for the U.S. leveraged finance markets as far as smaller players are concerned: It's like your big brother has left home, and you have the house all to...

Broken LBO Deals Don't Break All Hearts.
February 4, 2008... Like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees let loose on a teenage slumber party, the economy continues to fill fresh graves with dead LBO deals. But unlike the universal terror caused by these movie slashers, some may be glad to see a few LBO deals...

Big Loans See Big Troubles.
February 11, 2008... A confluence of factors has undercut the leveraged finance market, putting the syndication efforts for large leveraged buyout loans at risk. The latest casualties are Lehman Brothersa $2.2 billion debt syndication for Madison Dearborn Partners...

Desperate Times Make For Desperate Banks.
February 11, 2008... The task of syndicating sub-investment-grade debt has gotten downright Herculean, especially on larger deals. So, like the magician who always has one more trick up his sleeve, investment banks have begun to get creative in their attempts to...

Recent Deals Dance On A Libor Floor.
February 11, 2008... Over the past several months, loan investors have been playing their own version of "Deal or No Deal," NBC's game show hosted by Howie Mandel. As they decline what banks have to offer, investors have been trying to anticipate what the next...

For M&A, The Future Looks SPACtastic.
February 11, 2008... While the credit markets are on the long road to recovery, those interested in mergers and acquisitions are increasingly turning to special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, to get deals done. The current lack of liquidity in the...

JPMorgan Nabs Trader; RBS Names Chiefs.
February 11, 2008... JPMorgan has nabbed a former Citigroup distressed trader, who was laid off at the beginning of the year. Peter Lapina, who will report to John Abate, head of distressed trading, will trade stressed and distressed loans, distressed bonds and...

Rock-Tenn Makes Run At Challenging Debt Markets.
February 11, 2008... Despite myriad broken deals dotting the buyout and M&A landscape, there are some companies standing tall amid the wreckage. One such company is Rock-Tenn, which is bringing $1.4 billion in new bonds and loans to the markets and appears well...

Housing Bonds Gain, But Losses Still Reign.
February 11, 2008... Amid last weekas crush of continually negative economic data, bonds from home builders made gains on the secondary market. Home building continues its slump, but the measures these companies have taken may provide some respite as they slog...

Mixed Bag Of News Still Spells Losses.
February 18, 2008... Last week presented a mixed bag of economic news for high yield investors, but the overall forecast did not change, and investors continued to walk on eggshells in the face of an impending recession. Warren Buffett said that his firm,...

HY Tops Floating-Rate Funds As Loans Are Hit With TKO.
February 18, 2008... In a strange role reversal reminiscent of Disney's "Freaky Friday" films, floating-rate funds and junk bond funds have found themselves trading places, with the loan funds now underperforming bond funds significantly. And observers are calling...

RBC Streamlines Trading, Takes Aim At U.S.
February 18, 2008... With the overlap the leveraged loan and high yield bond markets have seen over the past couple of years, a number of firms have consolidated these businesses in some way, and now RBC Capital Markets has joined their ranks. For the first...

Analysts Predict More Losses This Quarter.(Financial report)
February 18, 2008... Bank of America analysts forecast the big investment banks could see more billion-dollar write-downs in the first quarter, with Citigroup and Goldman Sachs the most exposed, as unsold leveraged loans continue to choke the big banks' balance...

For Axcan, Bonds Are The New Loans.
February 18, 2008... The primary high yield market of today continues to price credits in dribs and drabs, mostly for energy companies. Last week, however, a pharmaceutical company that was scheduled to price $460 million in new bonds pulled an unsecured tranche...

Unwinds, Write-Downs And Weirdness, Oh My.(Cover story)
February 18, 2008... Dorothy just wanted to go home, back to Kansas where life was in black and white. Instead, she got kidnapped by delinquent flying monkeys, force-fed poppy dust by a pusher witch (with an irrational hatred of dogs) and finally arrived in Oz to...

CLOs Battle Liquidation In Already Troubled Market.
February 18, 2008... Falling prices are forcing total-rate-of-return market-value CLOs to liquidate their underlying assets. These unwinding CLOs could present opportunities for investors, but could also drive prices down even further. And sources say the loan...

Asian Leveraged Finance Set To Come Of Age.
February 25, 2008... Everyone, hopefully anyway, learns at a young age that Asia is the largest continent on Earth. Now banks are learning that the young Asian leveraged finance market is growing up. However, current credit market conditions combined with the...

Investors Balk At Lack Of Collateral Protection.
February 25, 2008... Proponents of covenants say that attractive spreads may not be enough to draw traditional investors back to the leveraged loan market in droves. With investors more discriminating than ever, and defaults beginning to pile up, deals that do not...

Private Equity Doesn't Sleep, Debt Market Or No.
February 25, 2008... Seems the signs continue to point to a private equity market that motors along (albeit at a much reduced velocity), getting deals done any which way it can, with credit agreements from investment banks, or without. Back in November, we...

Top Dog Goldman Sachs Cuts 1,500 Jobs.
February 25, 2008... Not even being number one helps in this market. Goldman Sachs is reportedly cutting rougly 1,500 jobs. The layoffs are expected to continue into March as a response to mounting troubles in the firm's leveraged lending and investing portfolios....

Where Are They Now? In Investors' Shopping Baskets.
February 25, 2008... The credit market downturn has left many of last year's high yield loan and bond issues-even those that came to the primary amid investor praise-pricing well below par, often across industry lines and without regard to individual company...

HY Market A Balancing Act Of Competing Fears.
February 25, 2008... Last week's economic news presented investors with the double dangers of inflation and recession. How investors react from this point depends on which of the two they perceive as the greater threat The latest catalyst for worry was last...