On an idle Friday afternoon, a contact at an American bank was discussing one of his favoured past times: surfing.
The banker shared a story about a shark museum in South Africa where there was displayed the gruesome contents found in the stomachs of sharks washed up on local beaches. The morbid array of items often included bracelets and watches...
The tale was enough to keep the Ranger out of the water for life! Loans and sharks don't mix, right?
But the loan market had something of its own feeding frenzy this week, with news of an agreement on Bayer and Monsanto’s $66bn mega merger.
With a $57bn bridge loan now in syndication, many bankers will be breathing a sigh of relief that their bosses did not feed them to the sharks after the dire performance of the loan market earlier this year.
In fact, one lead banker on the Bayer loan even contacted the Ranger to book a top table at GlobalCapital’s next loans dinner, presumably the banker is boldly predicting that he will be collecting the deal of the year award.
Last week, one levloan banker demonstrated his ability to navigate the shark-invested waters of an interview with two GlobalCapital journalists. Barclays’ Tom Egan sat down with our reporters and did well to try and avoid an awkward topic of discussion.
When questioned by one journalist, Egan said he was planning on charging his way through the meeting without addressing the uncomfortable truth of a number of aggressive repricings in the lev market recently.
On the topic of wild animals, there was also monkey behaviour the other day from Nomura economist, Tim Ash.
At a media briefing, the colourful emerging market economist was spotted wearing a Donald Trump branded tie.
Ash said that he was not in fact sponsored by the Republican Party's presidential candidate, but had been given the tie by a friend as a joke and had chosen absent-mindedly to wear it that day.
Let’s leave the animal spirits to the economists and try and keep a clear head in the loan market this week.
