High Yield Report articles from October 2003

High Yield Report archives from October 2003

Europe.(high yield staff hiring)
October 6, 2003... Periods of increased turnover in bank personnel typically point to a market that is either hot or seriously tanking. That is certainly true for the European high yield market, which suffered significant hemorrhaging two years ago, as...

US Company News.(Houghton Mifflin)
October 6, 2003... It hasn't even been a year since the deal took place and already the sponsors of the Houghton Mifflin LBO have been clamoring to get paid. Luckily for them, they got their cash through HM Publishing (the holding company), which issued...

US Company News.(Crown Central Petroleum)
October 6, 2003... Crown Central Petroleum (CCP) desperately needs to sell assets to meet interest payments for the next six months. The company has had no luck in selling two Texas refineries it put on the block, and has so has had to put itself up completely...

The Word Is.
October 6, 2003... A few brief words, as this week's issue is chock full of data. This week, we feature Thomson Financial's league tables for the third quarter 2003, as well as rankings for the period Jan. 1-Sept. 30, 2003, for US dollar-denominated high...

Europe.(third-quarter deals)
October 6, 2003... It was a bumper third quarter in Europe. Eleven deals priced for a total of just under $4 billion, surpassing last year's total issuance and equaling the amount issued in the first half of this year. And all this during the supposedly...

US.(league table rankings)
October 6, 2003... What a difference a year makes. Consider that for the period between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2002, proceeds from high yield deals underwritten totaled only $44.5 billion. According to Thomson Financial's most recent high yield league tables...

Healey Starts New Investment Fund.(Bill Healey, Picus Capital Management L.L.P.)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Bill Healey, former high yield portfolio manager at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, may have been out of the high yield market for a while, but he certainly hasn't been idle. Aside from contributing on a regular basis to HYR, Healey has...

Profile.(MYM high yield bond trust)(Interview)
October 6, 2003... If you're after a truly global perspective on the high yield market, then the MYM high yield bond trust could be for you. Based in Hong Kong, the fund invests in high yield fixed income assets issued by global fallen angels. HYR's senior...

People Moves.(Richard Phelan appointed at Credit Suisse First Boston; Paolo Pascarelli appointed at Royal Bank of Scotland)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Credit Suisse First Boston has added another body to its expanding team. Richard Phelan, former head of European high yield research at UBS, will join CSFB as co-head of European high yield research, just a couple of weeks after the firm hired...

Company News.
October 13, 2003... US investors have thus far been more forgiving than their European counterparts of formerly bankrupt companies tapping the high yield bond market, and have participated in recent issues from restructured companies Riviera Casino and Hayes...

Europe.
October 13, 2003... What do Rhodia, Safilo and Sanitec all have in common? At this point, more than you might imagine. All three have seriously disappointed the market with recent results announcements (Safilo and Sanitec failed to meet Q2 2003 targets, while...

US.
October 13, 2003... The boom in US high yield corporate bond issuance is tempting more players to try to get a place at the table, but bankers said they wonder if all that is left for newcomers are scraps. Among the shops said to be considering a plunge into...

The Word Is.(Editorial)
October 13, 2003... Last week (HYR 10/6/03), we wrote about some of the European firms that had cut back on high yield staff and are trying hard to get back into an area of business they now seem to perceive as lucrative. This week, we feature a story on the...

Conference.
October 13, 2003... The credit derivatives and other OTC derivatives markets are still growing at a gang-buster pace, but representatives of the industry speaking at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association's recent conference in New York were clearly...

US.
October 13, 2003... The US high yield market was unusually quiet last week, both in terms of new issuance and trading volumes in the secondary market. While last Monday's Yom Kippur holiday goes some way toward explaining the lull in activity, it was the...

People Moves.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Barclays Capital has appointed Bulent Baygun as director and head of US fixed income Strategy. Bagyun will be joining the firm at the end of the month and will be based in New York. He joins Barclays Capital from Salomon Smith Barney, where...

Syndicated Loans.
October 20, 2003... Overall, bank lending volume continued to drop through the third quarter of 2003, although leveraged lending saw an increase in volume that sources attributed largely to tighter spreads that prompted opportunistic borrowers to refinance. ...

Strategy.
October 20, 2003... Are performance anxieties getting you down? Are you worried about explaining to clients why you're significantly trailing the index in a year when the high yield market has excelled? Well, worry no more. Credit Suisse First Boston has just...

Europe.
October 20, 2003... Despite relatively strong new issuance in Europe so far this year ($8 billion versus last year's $3.07 billion), European investors still feel that supply is lacking, especially when compared to the $107 billion issued in the US year-to-date....

The Word Is.(Editorial)
October 20, 2003... Our columnist, Bill Healey, deals with an interesting issue in his piece this week. He looks at what he calls the "Lost Generation," those seasoned professionals in the fund management business who, for a host of reasons, left the more...

US.(Brief Article)
October 20, 2003... Gimme Credit, the leading provider of corporate bond announced last week that it has launched a new research product focusing exclusively on high yield bonds. The move comes in response to the lack of availability of independent,...

Fund.
October 20, 2003... Building on the strong performances of its four existing funds that invest mostly in bank loans, The Carlyle Group recently launched another $300 million fund that aims to provide the steady returns of par debt with the potential upside of...

Profile.
October 20, 2003... Morgan Stanley Investment Management's (MSIM) motto for its high yield effort over the past 14 years has been to "stay the course," and because of it, MSIM - one of the first firms to set up a dedicated high yield effort in 1989 - has seen and...

Opinion.
October 20, 2003... Both US and European financial markets have experienced many tectonic shifts over the last three to five years. But there was one very crucial shift that was so subtle, so hidden from view and so rarely discussed in the open that it largely...

Deal.
October 27, 2003... Dex Media East is looking to strike while the iron is hot. The company is repricing a $1.35 billion loan (reduced from the $1.49 billion it syndicated last year), in the hopes of clearing the market as smoothly as Dex Media West recently...

Credit.
October 27, 2003... High yield investors looking for diversity could soon find themselves with a new, and rather large playground to invest in: Russia. Following its recent upgrade to Baa3 by Moody's Investors Service, the country now has one foot in the...

US Company News.
October 27, 2003... Everything was looking good for Ondeo Nalco's jumbo $1.8 billion, four tranche dual currency high yield bond transaction (scheduled to price this Wednesday), until a surprisingly low rating assigned by Moody's Investors Service caught investors...

The Word Is.
October 27, 2003... When Russia defaulted on its external debt in the summer of 1998, I was a rookie reporter covering emerging markets. I had begun my career as a financial journalist in 1996 - an interesting time to be reporting on emerging markets debt, to...

Syndicated Loans.
October 27, 2003... Despite the end of the traditional refinancing season and continued investor resistance to so-called "old money," companies are still rushing to refinance existing debt at better interest levels. And with no more than a handful of buyout...

Profile.
October 27, 2003... Gimme Credit, the leading provider of independent corporate bond research for institutional investors, has proved its worth in the high grade market and has now moved into the high yield market. Last week, the firm announced the launch of a new...

Survey.(Brief Article)
October 27, 2003... At last, what we've all been waiting for. This week, we finally release the results of our subordination survey. Thanks to all of you who took the time to participate, we had a great response rate from investors involved in the European...