Loans and High Yield

Fund managers were looking into €6.5bn of live high yield bond and loan deals in the European leveraged finance markets on Wednesday. Those speaking to GlobalCapital were happy to see that spreads are slightly widening across ratings from last year’s historic lows.

China’s Guangzhou R&F Properties Co, the once troubled China Hongqiao Group and a local government-owned entity in Xinjiang all managed to pull off new dollar bonds on Tuesday, albeit with some difficulty.

Indonesia’s Star Energy Geothermal (Wayang Windu) put together its first green bond on Tuesday after weeks of courting investors. Its $580m deal was meant to have a similar reception as the blow-out project finance trade from Paiton Energy Co in 2017, but the more difficult market backdrop posed a challenge.

Macquarie Capital has hired the former head of US loan trading at HSBC to help take advantage of surging activity in leveraged finance markets.

Virginia-based GTT Communications launched a €1.7bn-equivalent package of leveraged loans this week, the first leg of funding for the acquisition of UK peer Interoute. The credits are well known, bankers said, but European investors have become more circumspect after overcoming a recent bout of volatility.

Japanese telecoms group Softbank opened the week in the European high yield market with a multi-billion refinancing deal to redeem its old 2013 bonds — and delete a covenant that could get in the way of its flotation.

Pimco has appointed a new head of its European high yield portfolio, as it looks for opportunities to invest in speculative grade credit, the firm said in a statement on Monday.

Four high yield property companies, Sunac China Holdings, Central China Real Estate, Jingrui Holdings and Yanlord Land Group, raised a total of $2.05bn on Monday, with some of them focusing on price and the others on size. But irrespective of their strategy, recent heavy supply pushed their bonds lower in the secondary market.

The lack of a fluid conversation in the European high yield market between bond buyers on one side, and underwriters and borrowers on the other, will cause trouble for everybody, say some fund managers and their advisers. They are already turning around this situation in their favour, but investment banks have yet to react.

Chinese property developers are rushing to sell dollar bonds as momentum picks up and the market stabilises. While heavy supply is weighing on investors’ minds, their familiarity with the sector and issuers’ willingness to pay up may be able to safeguard the deals.

Chinese real estate companies Cifi Holdings Group Co and Fujian Yango Group Co rolled out three year dollar bonds on Thursday, paying investors hefty premiums to get their deals done.

Yuexiu Property Company priced a two-tranche dollar bond on Thursday but decided to ditch a potential offshore renminbi deal. Separately, Peking University Founder Group Co returned with another bond with a keepwell structure for $425m.