Loans and High Yield

French media content producer Banijay is funding the acquisition of Castaway Television with its first ever bond. It has scheduled pricing for Friday, rising the tally of potential high yield bond sales above €2bn for this week.

Buyers considering Klöckner Pentaplast’s €1.6bn loan and Manutencoop's high yield bonds forced the issuers to sweeten terms this week, in a now rare sight in the leveraged finance market.

The UK’s eighth largest restaurant chain, Wagamama, sold £225m of new bonds on Wednesday, as it plans to call its debut bond and make savings in a sterling market awash with demand.

Shandong Ruyi Technology Group Co rattled over multiple speed bumps on its way to a $200m bond on Tuesday, having to navigate picky investors as well as concerns around cross-guarantee of bonds in China’s domestic market.

Melco Resorts Finance added $350m to its existing 2025 bonds on Tuesday, managing to capture the interest of some Asian investors that had previously shunned the credit.

Asian issuers flooded into the debt market on Tuesday, as seven credits battled for attention amid a somewhat positive tone in the market. Greenland Hong Kong Holdings grabbed $200m, while China Gold International Resources Corp nailed a $500m three year and Shimao Property Holdings sealed a tap.

Lotte Vietnam Shopping has hit the international syndicated loan market for a $300m borrowing, with Standard Chartered at the helm.

A busy Tuesday for dollar supply in Asia DCM is continuing unabated with a handful of launches and mandates, including one in euros, announced on Wednesday.

The European leveraged finance market was disappointed this week when Bain Capital’s and Cinven’s €5.3bn bid for German generic drug firm Stada fell apart.

A burst of M&A-related financing has put the spotlight on the Asian leveraged finance market, which some still see as a poor relation to its US, European and Australian equivalents. But recent deals show that Asia’s levfin market has been evolving.

China’s Baidu is readying a dual-tranche dollar bond offering, mandating banks for the deal, while Melco Resorts Finance opened a tap of its May notes on Tuesday.

Greenland Hong Kong Holdings returned to the market on Tuesday for the second time in as many weeks, as Shandong Ruyi Technology Group Co and Hong Kong conglomerate Swire Pacific also launched dollar deals.