Loans and High Yield

The Asian high yield market seemed to have finally got going in late January, with a parade of borrowers successfully pricing bonds. But the apparent failure of trades from two southeast Asian credits has taken its toll, shutting the market to further deals. With conditions already difficult, leads should act more responsibly — and say whether the bonds are going ahead or not.

Chinese property developer Evergrande Real Estate Group is tapping the offshore market with a rather uncommon strategy on February 10, opening books to a $1.5bn bond with pricing already fixed.

Taiwan Broadband Communications is expected to hit the market for a borrowing of around NT$30bn ($948m), with the money going towards refinancing and general corporate purposes, according to bankers.

German lift components producer Wittur has widened pricing on the loan portion of its €420m debt raising, while increasing the high yield bond part of the package.

Unsecured creditors of Towergate, the defaulting UK insurance broker, have succeeded in obtaining a new restructuring, replacing one agreed just over a week ago by its senior secured creditors.

Sky Bet, the UK online gambling business, allocated its £340m seven year term loan ‘B’ at around 10am on Monday morning, having further flexed the deal's terms in favour of investors.

Constantia Flexibles, the Austrian food packaging company, is marketing a €1.3bn loan to lenders at a London bank meeting this Monday.

Shenzhen listed Xuzhou Construction Machinery (XCMG) has returned to the market for a dual currency fundraising of $130m. The deal is offering lenders comfort in the form of a guarantee from China Export and Credit Insurance Corp (Sinosure).

The Asia ex-Japan offshore bond market was in the doldrums on February 9 as poor data out of China and a pair of troubled southeast Asian high yield deals kept issuers out of the market. And as the region creeps closer to the Chinese New Year holiday, market participants are expecting deal activity for this week to be slow.

Not content with pricing its IPO today, Swiss telecoms company Sunrise Communications Group has begun a roadshow for a Sfr500m-equivalent bond issue.

SIG Combibloc has followed Altice's recent example by demonstrating the European market’s keen appetite for large leveraged M&A deals. SIG has tightened pricing on the loans in its €2.8bn deal and replaced some of the deal's bonds with loans.

Dutch software company Exact Holdings has revised pricing on its $460m acquisition debt package, as the US loan market, where it is marketing most of the debt, continues to move wider.