Loans and High Yield

Lippo Malls Indonesia Retail Trust is in discussions with banks for a S$120m ($87m) loan that will support its acquisition of shopping malls in Indonesia.

China Evergrande Group reached an agreement with a group of strategic investors to avoid upcoming repayments, easing recent concerns on a potential liquidity squeeze for the company.

Research from Bank of America shows European high yield issuers boosted their cash holdings by €97bn year on year, a 60% increase, and a record level for nearly all regions and sectors.

Technical changes to the UK government’s large business support scheme open the way for private equity-owned firms to draw on the facility, but limits on dividends and new indebtedness may still discourage sponsors from using the scheme.

Gabriel Levy will start as Natixis's global head of debt capital markets this week, replacing Michael Haize, who is moving over to the global markets division to become global head of rates and currencies trading.

Caesars Entertainment, the US casino operator, is in advanced talks to buy UK gambling company William Hill for £2.9bn in cash. The deal will be financed with an equity raising by Caesars of about $1.7bn and a new $2bn non-recourse loan, secured on William Hill's non-US assets. It may be the start of a cascade of M&A.

Volvo Car, the Swedish manufacturer owned by China’s Geely Holding, sold a debut green bond this week, days after saying its freshly published green finance framework would help it transform into an electric car maker.

China Evergrande Group’s dollar bonds rebounded on Monday morning after tumbling late last week. But the poor performance of the company’s bonds appears to have spread to outstanding notes from other Chinese property companies.

China’s Minth Group, an auto parts company, has closed its debut loan at a bigger size of $200m.

Sovereign wealth funds from Abu Dhabi and Qatar have started to take ownership positions in new direct lending platforms in Europe and the US. But as Western economies plough into a deep recession, while rival investors still sit on barrels of dry powder, the wealth funds' decision to push into middle market credit now is surprising.

Spanish telecoms group MasMovil has finished taking out its acquisition debt for its take-private by Cinven, KKR and Providence Private Equity. Most of the €2.9bn financing came through a loan, allocated in July, with the bond portion offered this week following shareholder acceptance of the offer. Flexible documents prompted some criticism but the company’s strong growth story saw the bonds clear at the tight end of talk.

Debt purchasing firms are repeatedly hitting the high yield market to prepare their capital structures for the likely wave of portfolio sales as pandemic support schemes roll off, with France’s iQera the latest in the market. But some companies in the sector are in no position to refinance, such as Lowell which is effectively shut out of the market with its own credit concerns, raising questions about whether these companies can compete for post-Covid loan sales.