Loans and High Yield

UK pub owner Stonegate held calls with investors on Monday for a bond issue, to partly refinance £2.73bn worth of acquisition facilities used to acquire a larger competitor, Ei. Stonegate is set to be one of the first UK borrowers hit by coronavirus to sell high yield notes.

Investindustrial, the European private equity firm, has signed a €600m subscription credit facility linked to environmental, social and governance metrics, as sustainability-conscious finance makes further inroads into the private equity market.

Hexaware Technologies, an Indian software company majority owned by Baring Private Equity Asia, has mandated nine banks for a $600m take-private loan.

Gambling firm Gamenet sold €640m in fixed and floating senior secured notes this week, in a bid to refinance its take-private by private equity firm Apollo as well as two outstanding floating rate notes. The Italian company amended a raft of terms to sweeten the deal for investors.

Are Asian bond issuers being unrealistic with their price targets? Some bankers in the region say recent volatility should force issuers to rethink their expectations.

Chinese property company Agile Group Holdings has launched a HK$3.242bn ($418m) refinancing loan into syndication.

Chinese real estate developer Redsun Properties Group came to the bond market for the second time this year on Thursday, raking in $155m from a tap of its 2023 deal.

The US Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC) has updated its reference rate guidance for the move away from dollar Libor that removes the need to get a lending syndicate’s consent. But trade bodies on both sides of the Atlantic do not agree on the details, writes Mike Turner, and some lawyers claim that major issues still need to be addressed before the ARRC-recommended method can work.

Fives, the French industrial equipment group, has signed a €200m loan backed by the state, as government-backed facilities continue to prove essential to tackling the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Samson Paper Co has breached two covenants on a HK$780m ($100m) loan from 2017, with lenders still waiting for more information from the company.

Greenland Holding Group Co met its $650m size target for a bond on Wednesday, pairing the dual-tranche outing with a tender offer for its maturing notes.

Andreas Petrie, who is thought of as being a key figure in cultivating the Schuldschein market into an established corporate alternative to bonds in Europe, is to retire at the end of the year.