Pre-migration untagged articles

A handful of pharmaceutical acquisition deals were stressing investors, who were largely unsure of the sector.

-- Mark Shamber, cfo of United Natural Foods, on renewing a credit facility before maturity.

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.

After weeks of successfully placed debut deals from corporate issuers, the Swiss market ground to a halt this week as barely-manned syndicate desks struggled to build any significant new issues.

Rob Joliffe, head of debt capital markets at Royal Bank of Scotland, is leaving the bank for personal reasons. It is understood that while he has made himself available to his former boss and head of debt markets Symon Drake-Brockman to help with the integration with ABN Amro, he intends to take a break from banking. His contract expires at the end of March 2008, but he has already stepped down to part time working.

The extent of the damage to CDOs of ABS caused by downgrades, defaults and illiquidity was revealed this week with the liquidation of several CDOs.

Moody’s has published a review of the SIV sector affecting $130bn of debt issued by the vehicles. On November 30, the agency said the review was "prompted by the continued market value declines of asset portfolios".

Moody’s has placed one series of notes issued by Lunar Funding V on review for possible downgrade.

Table one: Non-syndicated deals for less than $250m excluding financial repackaged SPVs, self-led deals and issues with a term of less than 365 days.