Loans and High Yield

Property developer Country Garden Holdings has signed a $1.5bn dual currency syndicated loan for general corporate purposes, including prepayment of debt.

Local government financing vehicles from China brought out a parade of deals on Friday, with issuers including those from Jiangsu and Shanxi fighting for investors' attention in the Asia ex-Japan debt capital markets.

Changde Urban Construction and Investment Group Co priced its inaugural international bond on Thursday, getting its deal done before the New Year. The local government financing vehicle (LGFV) snapped up $250m from the three year notes.

Debut issuer Fujian Zhanglong Group Co started taking bids for a three year bond, following a roadshow in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

Greenyard, the Belgian fruit and vegetable producer, priced a €125m convertible bond on Thursday as part of a wider refinancing package to save it more than €15m a year of funding costs.

US data centre firm Equinix launched a €500m seven year term loan ‘B’ at bank meetings this week, following its announcement of plans to acquire a portfolio of data centres from Verizon for $3.6bn.

Apollo-owned French glass maker Verallia launched a €1.375bn term loan refinancing with a lender call on Thursday afternoon, its first deal since its failed €500m pay-if-you-can dividend recap offering in October.

The syndicate that supplied a $405m loan on which Royal Industries defaulted, is waiting for one last bank’s go-ahead for the borrower’s waiver request. All lenders must sign off the changes before they can be implemented.

Country Garden Holdings priced a 10 year bond on Wednesday, having pulling an earlier attempt at a deal in November. While the market remains challenging, the issue was backed by anchor orders as the leads left little to chance this time.

Three Chinese corporates took centre stage on Thursday with their respective dollar bond offerings. So far this week, borrowers from the country are the only ones to tap the Asia ex-Japan debt market.

The leveraged finance market should not view direct lending as competition but instead as a complementary funding source, said a direct lending official speaking at the Euromoney Nordic high yield conference in Stockholm this week.

In yet another takeover funded entirely in the loan market, GoDaddy, the US internet domain registrar, is acquiring peer Host Europe Group (HEG) from private equity firm Cinven and raising dollar leveraged loans for the deal.