Loan Ranger

Loan Ranger heard some worrying news this week. No, it’s not about UBS’s huge writedowns — and anyway, that’s a good sign that the markets are getting better, isn’t it?

The news from the US these days seems to be getting wilder and stranger by the minute, and for a moment Loan Ranger had the sneaking suspicion that it was all an elaborate early April Fool’s joke.

With Easter approaching, Loan Ranger and the gang are filling up the saddle bags, brushing down the horses and heading off into the sunset for four days’ rest.

Ears pricked up and pens at the ready, Loan Ranger, Tonto and Silver trooped over to the star-studded Euromoney Syndicated Loans seminar in London this week.

As an amateur photographer, Loan Ranger has always lamented the fact that boardrooms don’t make the best back-drops for those snapshots of deal signings we receive, which tend towards the unexciting and drab. So one thing that can be said for the photo that arrived in his inbox this week is that it certainly is original and imaginative.

The first quarter of the year is about done, but most bankers are no wiser as to how the loan market will fare in 2008. Loan marketeers usually insist one waits for certain events — the end of the year, the release of bank results, months with an ‘r’ in them, Ian Fitzgerald’s birthday, etc — before one can gauge the true state of the market.

Things that seem strange to the outside world are hardly a rarity at the ranch, what with having to cover the wacky and shenanigan-filled world of syndicated loans week in, week out. But this week topped everything when Tonto was invited to a deal signing — yes, a signing ceremony!

At the ranch we like to mark Valentine’s Day — along with all the other celebrations for which you are forced to spend vast quantities of money on utter tat that will be thrown away in a few weeks’ time.

Unlike Silver, Tonto has never been one to shy away from a hard day’s graft, but after satisfying the demands of the interweb on Wednesday for a Loan Ranger breaking news special (wonders never cease) that reported on the EuroWeek Syndicated Loans and Leveraged Finance Dinner, he was shocked to realise that work was not cancelled on Thursday.

With the EuroWeek Loans Dinner less than a week away, the air in the ranch was so charged with excitement you could almost touch it.

Being a bit of a one trick pony, Silver had hoped that the holiday season would be fully behind everyone this week, giving him the opportunity to do what he likes best — writing loans stories.

A new year, and a fresh start — or so Loan Ranger had hoped. Tired of harping on about the same old team of jokers at Standard Bank, and conscious that maybe David Savin and Robert Scott were tiring of it too, Silver had set out to thrill a few new loan marketeers this year by featuring the seldom featured.