Loans and High Yield

Genting Hong Kong, a cruise ship operator under financial pressure due to the pandemic, held a meeting on Monday with its bank creditors to discuss a debt restructuring plan.

Compart Systems, a high precision metal components maker, has returned to the loan market to refinance an old borrowing from 2016, which was used to support its buyout by Platinum Private Equity.

Conditions are ripe for a resurgence in high yield bond and leveraged loan issuance, and market participants expect companies to start coming to the market as early as next week, with a variety of motivations.

Leveraged finance bankers in Asia are counting on the possible delisting of a host of Chinese companies from the US to give a fillip to the region’s dollar loan market this year. But bankers should temper their expectations.

Future Retail made a $14m payment on its outstanding dollar bond this week, narrowly avoiding a default.

One of the more unusual green bonds of 2019, the $125m high yield issue for Teekay Shuttle Tankers, which operates ships serving the offshore oil industry, was tapped on Friday for $75m under the company's new name of Altera Shuttle Tankers.

Liberty Global's subsidiaries have priced two sets of term loan 'B's to support its $7.4bn acquisition of mobile phone company Sunrise, less than a year after the latter’s plans to acquire Liberty’s subsidiary UPC fell through.

M&G Real Estate Asia has received a W115bn ($96m) green loan from OCBC Bank to finance a green building in South Korea.

UBS reckons it has a hit upon a ‘unique formula’ for growth as it expands its investment banking offering to its high net worth clients, writes David Rothnie.

Europe’s leveraged finance market is forecast to be hit by the biggest wave of defaults since 2009 next year, yet there is a disconnect with market sentiment. As Standard & Poor’s predicts the default rate to reach 8.5%, bullish investors continue to pile in. Silas Brown and Mike Turner report.

Casino developer Wynn Macau has made a rapid return to the bond market for an $850m deal, riding on an uplift in sentiment following the slow easing of travel restrictions to the Asian gambling hub.

Standard & Poor’s expects the European default rate to climb to the highest level seen since the fallout from the last financial crisis.