Pre-migration untagged articles

Strong demand for commercial paper issued by corporate borrowers and Australian banks taking advantage of a favourable basis swap brightened up an otherwise slow week in the Euro-commercial paper market.

Was Wall Street's rise and fall of 2007 worthy of song? One informed person thought so and posted a music video about it called "Wall Street Meltdown" on YouTube last Tuesday.

Movie Gallery's bank debt traded at par after news broke that Goldman Sachs committed an underwritten facility to refinance the company's existing $836.4 million in bank loans.

-- David Krueger, v.p. and cfo of GreenHunter Energy, on the company's search to find project financing.

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.

With $72bn of private placements sold so far in 2008 for third party borrowers, the MTN market has been in better shape than anecdotal evidence would suggest. On a year-to-date basis (only including trades that have settled by the beginning of February) year-on-year supply has reached $50bn compared to $57bn at the same point in 2007.

Following the announcement last week by the Belgian debt management office that it had opened up trading of its government securities to three platforms, it was the turn of the Dutch State Treasury Agency (DSTA) this week to announce that it was also opening up competition to other platforms.

Despite bringing no new covered bond benchmark issues since the week beginning February 4, issuers are still keen to join the line with those waiting for an issuance window to open.

CIF Euromortgage yesterday (Thursday) began roadshowing a new registered covered bond programme with arranger Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, joining the growing ranks of international issuers keen to take advantage of a market that German issuers have long tapped through Namenspfandbriefe, which account for around one-third of Pfandbrief supply. The sector was also recently joined by a first cédulas issuer.

Société Générale is likely to weather the current storm and could survive best without a takeover, an analyst argued this week, despite rising speculation that the French bank could be bought.

Bank of Moscow on Wednesday became the second Russian issuer ever to visit the Swiss franc market since the demise of the Soviet Union when it issued its debut bond.