Loans and High Yield

Debt collector Lowell said on Friday that it had issued a private placement of high yield bonds to raise £117.5m-equivalent, taking advantage of strong market conditions to further shore up liquidity following its October refi.

Fugro, the Dutch geo-data specialist, has completed its €197m rights issue, a key proponent in a large refinancing package that resolves longstanding issues around debt maturity.

Embattled Chinese borrower Tsinghua Unigroup Co missed payment on a $450m bond that was due on Thursday, with the non-payment expected to trigger cross-defaults on a number of its other dollar notes.

GlobalCapital and Standard Chartered hosted a combination of virtual and in-person roundtable on the China high yield debt market at the end of November. The third part of a 2020 series followed the first roundtable in April and the second in July. This time around, leading experts came together to discuss the opportunities and outlook for the Mainland’s high yield bond market.

The launch this week of the Climate Transition Finance Handbook has propelled the sustainable debt market towards a new era, in which the emphasis moves from a labelled security to the issuer itself, writes Jon Hay.

Green bonds awakened the debt capital markets from their long, slumbrous ignorance of environmental peril.

Mid-December is rarely the perfect time to take out more than €1bn of LBO financing, but 2020 has been full of surprises, and BC Partners’ acquisition debt for its investment in Italian machinery maker Industria Macchine Automatiche (IMA) flew off the shelf — though not without a tweak to the most aggressive documentation terms. Plenty of other high yield issuers also spotted the window, which looks set to make this December record-breaking.

Direct lender Alcentra has raised €557m for its second European fund focusing on stressed and distressed debt. AlbaCore closed a new disclocation fund with $1bn of commitments this week, too. Both aim to tap into companies that have fallen down the credit spectrum during the pandemic.

Two European borrowers are looking to reprice leveraged loans tighter for the first time since the coronavirus crisis hit, underscoring the market’s strong tone following its recovery. Groupe CEP, a French insurance broker, was one of the first post-pandemic loan deals to break cover in early June, when the market still wanted to see some spread on new facilities.

Vedanta Resources sold a $1bn bond this week, easing mounting concerns about its debt repayment abilities. The metal and mining company’s return was not easy, as it had to concede to a number of investor-friendly terms. Morgan Davis reports.

French supermarket group Casino has launched a refinancing to clean out its upcoming debt maturities, hitting the final issuance slot given the long syndication timeline for raising a term loan' B'. It aims to issue a €200m TLB and a €300m unsecured bond, while launching a tender offer to buy back up to €1.2bn of outstanding debt.

Jaguar Land Rover seized this week’s strong market window to raise enough cash to clear out its 2021 bond maturity by taking advantage of investor appetite for cyclical sectors. Good conditions encouraged it to raise $150m extra from its original plan.