Loans and High Yield

Chinese property companies are slowly returning to the dollar bond market, reopening issuance from the sector after a two-month hiatus. Although debt bankers are not predicting a big pick-up in deal flow from these high yield issuers, the lack of supply is giving some borrowers an edge over pricing. Morgan Davis reports.

GlobalCapital has made the difficult but hopefully understandable decision to postpone our 2020 Bond Awards, but we are now relaunching them today.

JP Morgan and Nomura have started the syndication of the loan backing Bridgepoint’s buyout of French mortgage insurance broker Financière CEP, in a sign that market conditions have improved enough to fire the starting gun on the sale of loans underwritten before the coronavirus crisis shut markets.

China’s Hope Education Group is making its debut in the offshore loan market for a $200m borrowing.

Chinese property borrowers are back in the bond market, following the success of Zhenro Properties Groups’ $200m deal last week. But Tuesday’s issuers — Country Garden Holdings Co and Redco Properties Group — saw two different outcomes, as they grappled with an illiquid secondary market and difficult pricing levels.

Genting Hong Kong, a cruise ship operator, has sent out a waiver request to lenders to postpone the principal payments on a $300m loan, as it navigates challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Without a vaccine for the coronavirus, it is clear that reopening offices is a serious risk for capital markets businesses. What firms need are strict distancing measures, facial masks and hand sanitiser — but also, crucially, access to frequent testing for the virus and the antibody.But that is a path fraught with difficulty.

Some financial sponsors are said to be trying to purchase loans from their competitors’ portfolio companies, as an opportunistic way to benefit from the coronavirus-driven disruption. But the European loan market’s restrictive transfer provisions make this a legal high-wire act.

Loans bankers are puzzled by a probe by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority into whether banks attached improper conditions to loans to companies during the coronavirus crisis. They are concerned the FCA could edge into criticism of the system of bank-client relationships that underpin modern corporate finance, and some believe this is already having an influence on how companies think about mandates.

Richie Revill, formerly at Barclays, has joined the boutique Asian investment bank SC Lowy as head of markets for Europe.

The slowly reopening European high yield market faced another test on Tuesday, following Sappi’s decision to pull its planned issue at the end of last week. Data centre and cable network firm Cogent was raising an B3/B- rated add-on in order to pay a dividend. The company is too leveraged already to allow a dividend under its existing bond docs but is using a "temporary deleveraging" and escrow structure to work around them.

The Treasury announced on Tuesday an extension to the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS). From May 26 certain businesses can apply for loans up to £200m under CLBILS but there are restrictions on dividend payouts and management pay rises.