Pre-migration untagged articles

John Winter, head of European investment banking and debt capital markets at Barclays Capital, describes how the bank is relating to its new strategic investors and defends the role of sovereign wealth funds in the banking sector.

In an extraordinary week for covered bonds, issuers and bankers were convinced that the market faced the unprecedented disaster of a prolonged closure — only for ING Bank to shatter the gloom with a successful Eu1bn debut issue that most specialists in the product had thought was impossible.

City of Berne was the only issuer to tap the Swiss franc bond market this week as it priced a Sfr200m ($195m) eight year bond on Monday via ABN Amro and Schweizer Verband der Raiffeisenbanken.

SEB AG last Friday priced a Eu1bn two year public sector Pfandbrief at 7bp through mid-swaps, the tightest on a jumbo so far this year, but some syndicate officials involved warned that similar issuers should not follow the bank’s example of using the retention format, particularly if the turmoil elsewhere in the covered bond market finally infects the German product.

DRESDNER Kleinwort’s $18bn structured investment vehicle, K2 Corp, came under more pressure this week as Moody’s put its senior notes on review for downgrade, following a similar action from Standard & Poor’s last month.

THE MELTDOWN of a $210m fund-linked note that had been issued by Kommuninvest will not affect the borrower’s structured MTN funding activity, said Tomas Werngren, chief executive, and the borrower had emerged from the fracas with its reputation intact.

Barclays’ results will have relieved investors as one-off hits were broadly in line with those flagged in December and with capitalisation looking surprisingly resilient.

JPMorgan, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank are increasing the $275 million term loan for Charter Communications in response to strong demand from investors. The expanded term loan will be between $400-$500 million, an investor looking at the deal said. Pricing is LIBOR plus 5% with a LIBOR floor at 3.5%. The original-issue-discount is being talked in the 96 to 97 area. The banks launched the loans for the St. Louis, Mo.-based cable operator in a conference call Tuesday morning. But by mid-afternoon, the banks notified investors that they would possibly increase the term loan due to strong demand, the investor said. The loans will be used to pay down existing borrowing and general corporate purposes. Bankers at the lead banks either declined to comment or did not immediately return calls.

Considering its usual pace, the loan market saw very little activity this week giving traders a chance to check personal e-mails, search Travelocity.com for vacation specials and shop for new cars.

-- Michael Herzig, former co-head of U.S. collateralized debt obligations at Deutsche Bank who has just joined McDonnell Investment Management, on current market opportunities.

Diagnostic imaging services company, RadNet expects to close several acquisitions within the next month using its recently increased credit facilities.

The following charts show the top five advancers and decliners in terms of % moves in the loan, bond and credit default swap markets for the previous week.