Loans and High Yield

Two borrowers from the Shandong province in China used different approaches to woo dollar investors to their deals on Thursday, with one going for a rare structure and the other opting to anchor its issuance.

ING is looking to build a footprint in US investment grade and high yield debt markets, with the bank hoping to win more syndication mandates from existing corporate clients, senior figures at the bank said on Thursday.

The year's total issuance of triple-C rated bonds in the European high yield market jumped from €4bn to more than €6bn this week. Many believe this could be the last week to bring new deals in 2017.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group has appointed Alice Gastaldi to its leveraged finance division, the bank said on Thursday. She had been working at UniCredit for almost eight years.

The euro high yield pipeline unveiled a battery of deals this week, six of them with ratings below double-B. The largest came from French frozen food retailer Picard Surgelés, which will refinance over €1bn of existing debt and pay a dividend to its private equity sponsors.

Repricings and refinancings have dominated this year’s leveraged loan issuance. This week, Apcoa added one more such deal. But investors proved they can still discriminate, as House of HR had to sweeten the terms of its new refinancing loan.

Euro high yield bond buyers caught sight of a rare two digit coupon this week. Perstorp, the Swedish speciality chemicals group, priced its subordinated note with a 10% coupon.

Nine banks have formed the syndicate for a HK$1.25bn loan for Hong Kong-listed China Tian Lun Gas Holdings.

Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) has brightened up Thailand’s offshore syndications market, tapping international liquidity for a $625m loan. With few other deals from the southeast Asian country whetting lenders’ appetite, banks are keen to take a piece of the fundraising. Shruti Chaturvedi reports.

Two Chinese government-owned entities, Chengdu Communications Investment Group Corp and Qinghai Province General Aviation Group Co, priced their dollar bonds on Wednesday, but opted for very different tenors — the former a 10 year and the latter 363 days.

Four Chinese corporate issuers Wanda Holding Group Co, Shandong Iron & Steel Group Co, Hefei Industry Investment Holding (Group) Co and Wuhan State-Owned Asset Management Company are fighting for investors’ attention on a busy Thursday in the primary bond market.

McGraw-Hill Education launched a new payment-in-kind (PIK) toggle high yield bond on Wednesday, as part of a bigger refinancing package. Once an indicator of peaking credit conditions, PIK toggle deals have become increasingly rare as borrowers head to cheaper and more flexible second lien loans.