Loans and High Yield

Anne Stevenson-Yang is a director and co-founder of J Capital Research, a New York firm and short seller that specialises in Chinese companies, as well as international companies looking to grow their business in China. GlobalCapital spoke to Stevenson-Yang about the dangers of trusting financial reporting from China, and steps stock exchanges could take to stifle the likelihood of fraud.

Institutional investors holding Hammerson’s £689m ($900.27m) of private placements (PPs) are to be offered a pre-payment option first after the UK property company’s intended rights issue, according to a prospectus on the upcoming trade. Unlike the UK property company’s bondholders and bank lenders, during their coronavirus amendment process, PP investors negotiated an offer of pre-payment at par of 30% of any proceeds of capital raises or disposals.

Indian agricultural company Jain Irrigation Systems, which has been navigating a liquidity crisis for more than a year, has put in place two restructuring plans for its onshore and offshore debt.

Barclays is building up sustainability coverage in its investment bank with new positions announced globally on Monday and effective immediately.

Taiwan’s Taiflex Scientific Co, an electronic parts and components maker, has closed a dual-currency borrowing of NT$2.5bn ($85m) with eight banks.

GlobalCapital and Standard Chartered hosted a virtual roundtable on the China high yield debt market at the end of July as the second part of a 2020 roundtable series. The first was conducted in mid-April. The market has seen drastic changes in the months since. We gathered together a group of leading high yield bond experts to find out how they have dealt with those changes.

Nordex has signed a €350m revolving credit facility, guaranteed by the German state, to help the wind turbine manufactuer through the coronavirus pandemic. Elsewhere in Germany, Tele Columbus refreshed its loan support.

Trading volumes for European investment grade and high yield corporate bonds reached the lowest volume of the year in July as the market paused for breath following a record pace of issuance since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chinese developers E.House and Beijing Properties closed taps to outstanding dollar bonds at the end of last week, raising $250m between them.

A consortium-led by Henderson Land Development is in talks with banks for a new loan to support its development of a residential project in Hong Kong.

Trading platform Liquidnet is set to expand into the primary market through a new issuance system for European corporate and emerging markets bonds, one that would rival Ipreo’s Investor Access and other, newer entrants to the business. Liquidnet’s global head of fixed income, Constantinos Antoniades, discussed the plans with GlobalCapital.

Companies across Europe are shifting their aspirations from surviving the coronavirus pandemic to making the most of the economic opportunities it may present. Both loan and bond bankers are seeing more requests to help clients fund M&A. In the last few weeks, multiple companies have signed loans linked to acquisitions and more are expected after the summer.