Loans and High Yield

Bond exchanges and tender offers are rising in popularity among Asian issuers, as funding officials race to beat a mountain of maturities next year. Addison Gong reports.

A high yield bond origination banker has left BNP Paribas.

Berry Global, the US plastic packaging maker, will raise bonds to finance its purchase of UK plastics maker RPC Group, it said on Wednesday. The debt raising will feature $3bn of senior secured notes in two tranches. This marks the end of leveraged finance bankers' hopes that the auction of RPC would deliver substantial new money supply to the European market.

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise has made a quick offshore loan comeback, aiming to raise $300m.

Chinese issuers kept up their bond issuances on Wednesday, despite having to contend with the backdrop of the US-China trade war. Three borrowers raised a combined $840m, proving that investors are still buying a range of credits.

Cambodia’s Prasac Microfinance Institution is in talks with two banks for its offshore loan comeback.

A rallying equity market has tripped up the joint tender offer Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman made for German internet company Scout24, leaving leveraged finance bankers and investors mourning the loss of one of the few sizeable new money deals set to hit the market this year.

Switzerland’s Transocean has amended its bank revolving credit facility to increase the size to $1.36bn, with the fallen angel offshore contract drilling services provider keeping an additional $140m in the wings on the undrawn facility.

Asset manager Pemberton has opened an office in Denmark to expand its European business.

The looming US-China trade war is stalking European corporate credit markets, though it has not yet made a full-on assault on confidence. Investment grade bond players blamed a quiet start to the week on it, and it seems now to be finally being noticed in high yield land, where opportunistic issues have dried up.

Lenders were meeting on Tuesday ahead of a loan to fund the purchase of Euroports, which operates shipping terminals in Antwerp, Ghent, and Rostock, by a consortium including two Belgian sovereign wealth funds.

UK fund Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Fund (SEQI) has bumped up its revolving credit facility to £200m, with the infrastructure debt financier considering an equity issue as it builds up a war chest for planned investments.