Loans and High Yield

Banks have started marketing the sterling loan to fund the acquisition of a stake in Westbury Street Holdings, the parent company of Searcy’s champagne bars and Benugo coffee bars, with a £363m seven year term loan and a £91m eight year second lien on offer.

Chinese property issuers led the reopening of Asia’s offshore bond market following a week-long holiday in the Mainland to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Investors responded to the new deals with enthusiasm.

India’s Bharat Oman Refineries, a joint venture between Bharat Petroleum Corp and Oman Oil Co, has returned to the offshore loan market with a $125m deal that breaks a four-year absence.

The harmful climatic effects of biofuels, which policymakers have long promoted as a solution to climate change, are increasingly being pointed out, although the financial industry remains largely unaware of them. A report by ShareAction has highlighted the risks investors and banks are running by financing the burning of wood as a fuel.

Asia’s debt markets, which were shut for the Chinese New Year holiday this week, are back to a wait and see mode following delays in trade talks between the US and the Mainland.

Rating agencies and investors are realising they have more in common than they thought when it comes to environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. And they are more inclined now to work together than find fault.

JP Morgan has overhauled its European management team as it places its oldest franchise at the heart of a push to boost its UK M&A business.

A loan for Stella, a French shutter and grill manufacturer, is set to be allocated on Friday, with the deal oversubscribed at original guidance on Thursday afternoon, wrapping up another project shelved in the face of last year’s deteriorating market.

High yield bonds for auto parts manufacturer Adient slipped more than three points on Thursday as the company tweaked its loan covenants and produced disappointing numbers. The firm’s new management is taking aggressive action to turn the group around and says it needs the financial headroom to do so.

Global fintech M&A is forecast to have another stellar year after providing multi-billion dollar lending opportunities in the last 12 months, with the UK expected to continue leading the way despite Brexit uncertainty.

GlobalCapital revealed the winners of its 2018 Loan Awards at its annual Syndicated Loans and Leveraged Finance Awards Dinner at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in London on February 6. The complete results are below. GlobalCapital congratulates all the winners and nominees.

LetterOne, the largest shareholder in troubled Spanish retailer Dia (Distribuidora Internacional de Alimentación), has unveiled a tender for the group’s shares, along with a plan to inject €500m of equity, as an alternative to the existing management plan for the group. The share price bounced on the news, but bondholders need more clarity about LetterOne’s intentions — and about what will happen to the firm’s €1.3bn of trade payables.