Loans and High Yield

Hong Kong’s Citychamp Watch & Jewellery Group has closed a $150m term loan with five lenders.

A busy day for bond issuance from Chinese property companies offered investors a dash of variety, as investment grade rated China Jinmao Holdings Group vied for attention amid a slew of deals from high yield credits including Kaisa Group Holdings.

The leveraged loan market in Europe is relying on several high profile take-private trades to rescue volumes and fees for 2019, and give the squeezed CLO market much needed supply. But these deals are vulnerable, and can easily fall apart, as sponsors must navigate an obstacle course of trade buyers, competition authorities, and recalcitrant shareholders.

Shandong Qingyuan Group Co, a Chinese petrochemical company, has made a quick return to the loan market with a $750m syndicated facility, six months after closing a club deal.

Heavy bond supply last week from Chinese property developers took a toll on Fantasia Holdings Group Co, which failed to tighten pricing on a $200m bond on Monday. But China Hongqiao Group, an aluminium maker, found solid response from investors due to a lack of issuance from industrial credits.

Andrew Bailey, CEO of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, said on Monday that progress was needed in the next “year or so” in moving the loan market away from Libor. He added that the consent solicitation undertaken by Associated British Ports to switch an FRN to Sonia was a model for other borrowers.

The Carlyle Group has raised $3.1bn of investable capital and $2.4bn of equity commitments for its new credit opportunities fund, tapping investors’ interest in private debt to surpass the firm’s target goal.

Citi is preparing a four tranche high yield deal to fund the creation of ‘Trivium’, a new metal packaging company, owned by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and formed from a $2.5bn spin-out from Ardagh, combined with its Exal business.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) has had to row back on fines for four Nordic banks for issuing credit ratings, after an appeal board found that the banks had not broken the rules negligently.

Tobam, the French asset manager, is ensuring its fixed income portfolios have carbon footprints at least 20% smaller than those of their reference benchmarks, extending a policy already in place for equity portfolios. It is focusing on the carbon footprint of issuers, rather than individual issues, meaning that it would ignore the specific environmental qualities of a green bond.

Nine Dragons Paper has moved a HK$3.9bn ($498m) loan into general syndication, giving a small group of banks two weeks to make a decision on the deal.

Event-driven hedge fund Sand Grove Capital Management has disclosed a 5% stake in UK car dealer BCA Marketplace, the subject of a takeover offer from TDR Capital. The purchase follows big sales from some of BCA’s cornerstone shareholders who had agreed to support the bid, including embattled Woodford Investment Management, and Invesco.