Loans and High Yield

French technical and energy services company Spie is mulling its options for the acquisition financing of German peer SAG, but a company source dismissed talk of an imminent high yield offering.

Europe’s corporate bond market has made exactly the start to 2017 that lead managers would have hoped for. RCI Banque, the French car finance bank, took the lead on the first business day, Tuesday, and although its deal was handsomely oversubscribed, it still left bankers unsure how strong investors’ appetites were.

Automobile parts maker Zhongding Hong Kong is back in the loans market after a year and a half for a €150m ($156.6m) three year facility.

Chinese sportswear manufacturer Xtep International Holdings has doubled the size of its latest borrowing to $200m after finding demand from a group of nine banks.

Real estate company China Aoyuan Property Group has become the first issuer in Asia ex-Japan to launch a dollar bond in 2017, marketing a three year on Wednesday.

German kitchen furniture maker Alno AG started the year with improving earnings data and a big new investor, private equity firm Tahoe, but analysts and bondholders remain unconvinced by the credit.

Syndication of Elysium Healthcare’s reduced £133m loan has run over into 2017 at investors’ requests, according to a banker on the deal, as the European leveraged loan market returns with expectations of a healthy New Year pipeline.

Guangzhou R&F Properties Co and KWG Property Holding raised a combined $515m at the tail end of last week, just before the start of what many anticipate to be a busy year for Chinese property debt issuance.

Chinese property developer Modern Land (China) Co and textile producer Shandong Ruyi Technology Group Co priced their respective taps at the end of last week, taking advantage of regulatory approvals that expired at the year end.

Allocations are out for a $150m three year loan for a subsidiary of Chinese electro-acoustic product maker Goertek, which gathered commitments from 10 banks during syndication.

Chinese property developer Cifi Holdings (Group) Co has raised $530m from a multi-currency club loan.

In 2016, blockchain went from a buzzword to a ‘must have’ in financial markets, as seemingly every bank and exchange invested in projects and proofs-of-concept. But with so many asset classes having been promised big gains, 2017 begins with a dose of realism about the limits of the technology — and the challenges it poses for regulators. Dan Alderson reports.