Loans and High Yield

Chinese industrial name Fufeng Group raised $350m from a bond on Tuesday, offering a coupon step-up to show its commitment to maintaining its investment grade rating from S&P. Logan Property Holdings Co also separately bagged $300m on the same day.

The UK and Italy are potential flashpoints in a European credit market where political fragmentation is the biggest internal risk, Standard & Poor’s warned on Tuesday. Continued low interest rates will be crucial to companies staying in good financial health.

Hangzhou Jianggan District Urban Construction and Comprehensive Development Co has raised $200m from a bond, shrugging off news from last week that a Xinjiang local government financing vehicle (LGFV) had unexpectedly missed payments on a renminbi note.

Chris Munro, co-head of leveraged finance for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is leaving London to take up a new role as the bank’s sole global head of leveraged finance in New York.

European private equity firms are raising an increasing number of mega-funds this year, according to data and software firm PitchBook. At the same time, their share of high yield bond issuance has almost doubled.

India's Shriram Transport Finance Corp is tapping the loan market for a $350m five year borrowing, its first dollar-denominated fundraising.

Chailease International Finance Corp is turning to the loans market for an up to $250m borrowing, just a few months after sealing renminbi-denominated and Japanese yen facilities.

Taiwan’s Paiho Shih Holdings has returned to the offshore loan market, seeking a $120m refinancing loan through KGI Bank.

Private equity firms have bolstered their high yield footprint in European and Nordic issuance, but yield spreads are also running up, according to SEB this week.

India’s Reliance Communcations (RCom) tender and exchange offer, unveiled last week, would clear the issuer’s books of its $300m 6.5% 2020 bond. But since RCom defaulted on a payment for the notes last November, it is in no position to offer investors such paltry tender and exchange terms.

India’s Tata Motors has closed the senior syndication of an offshore loan worth $237.6m, helping the company fund the buyback of bonds due in 2020.

Starwood Property Trust was looking to price a $300m high yield bond on Wednesday to support the acquisition of GE Capital’s energy project finance business, as the firm looks to diversify beyond core commercial real estate activities.