Loans and High Yield

Norwegian Air Shuttle improved the terms of an offer to bondholders for a second time this week, just hours before the deadline for its creditors to agree on a restructuring plan that it hopes will eventually unlock a state rescue.

Lloyds Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland have decided not to charge clients an arranging fee when lending via the UK’s Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS), while HSBC will not charge any early repayment fees.

Deutsche Bank has regained its number one spot in its home market, but it was its traditional investment banking business that shone rather than investments made as part of the firm’s new Germany-focused strategy, writes David Rothnie.

Coffee machine company Selecta’s high yield bonds dropped 24 points on Wednesday after it released awful numbers for the fourth quarter of last year — sending leverage shooting up well before any coronavirus impact. It was the first company in Europe to announce it had raised new super-senior debt from its sponsor, KKR Credit, which injected a €50m liquidity facility into the capital structure in March.

UK discount clothing retailer Matalan said this week that it hoped to take advantage of the government’s Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) — but that the extra £50m available under the programme will have to be senior to its public bonds, requiring bondholder consent.

The Schuldschein market is expected to reopen in a matter of days, but arrangers will face a changed market and will have to adapt to the new corporate lending landscape created by the coronavirus pandemic.

In contrast to what analysts had expected before its first quarter results, Deutsche Bank reckons its investment bank will outperform last year’s revenue figures in 2020. However, its fixed income and currencies sales and trading business did not match peers’ revenue growth in the first quarter.

Norwegian Air Shuttle has revised the terms of its restructuring pitch to bondholders, cutting the size of the writedown it is asking them to take and making sure they get the benefit of the security over landing slots they were granted last year.

From Italian government bonds to fallen angels, nothing is junk unless the European Central Bank says so.

Marks & Spencer, the UK retailer, has negotiated with its lenders to relax the covenant testing on its £1.1bn revolving credit facility, as it tries to mitigate the effects of a pandemic that has sent its ratings crashing into junk territory.

The Financial Conduct Authority has written to UK banks warning them against pressuring clients for mandates on Covid-19 equity capital raises using their lending relationship as justification.

UBS generated almost as much profit before tax from its global banking and markets operations in the first quarter as it did across all of last year, it revealed on Tuesday. This was despite taking credit losses and marking down exposures. The bank benefitted from a good turnout in FX and rates and its heavy involvement in a shrunken M&A fee pool.