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Reaping the benefits
Barclays started to build its US leveraged franchise in 2006 by hand-picking staff from competitors and a decade later is a powerhouse in leveraged and investment-grade financing. For cementing a leading position among US banking titans, Barclays is IFR’s Americas Loan House of the Year.
Get the beers in
In November 2015, Molson Coors Brewing announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement with Anheuser-Busch InBev to purchase SABMiller’s 58% stake in Miller Coors, the joint venture formed in the US by SABMiller and Molson Coors in 2008.
Power play
Brookfield’s US$600m-equivalent dual-currency term loan to help fund its US$3.5bn purchase of Colombia’s Isagen was far from easy, but skilful execution made this complex syndication a success.
So solid crew
Syndicated lending tumbled in 2016 as refinancing activity slumped in a volatile year full of political surprises. For providing much-needed stability, consistency and reliability in turbulent times, BNP Paribas is IFR’s EMEA Loan House of the Year.
Marvellous medicine
Israel-headquartered Teva Pharmaceutical Industries’ punchy US$33.75bn loan backing its acquisition of Allergan’s generics business proved that for the right borrower the loan market could still provide multi-billion dollar bridges regardless of capital market volatility.
Ahead of the game
Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings capped a busy year in the loan markets with a US$3.5bn financing for its purchase of Finnish mobile gaming firm Supercell, completing the deal smoothly and in remarkably short order.
All hail Uber!
Internet-based car pick-up service Uber, itself already a byword for disrupting established industries, confounded lenders in the leveraged loan market accustomed to mature and staid companies with its US$1.15bn term loan.
Sweet success
Froneri, the ice cream and frozen food joint venture between Nestle and Britain’s R&R Ice Cream, successfully captured liquidity from across the market to place a €1.02bn loan at the end of September, tapping into CLOs, managed accounts and an increasingly active bank market to refinance high-yield bonds with leveraged loans, reversing issuance patterns since the financial crisis.
Rock-bottom interest rates, quantitative easing and negative yields have turned the fixed-income investor universe upside down. How do fund managers make sense of these changes and how are they positioning their portfolios in response?
2016 couldn’t have been much worse for equity capital markets bankers: big spikes in volatility, intermittent periods of market closure, pulled deals and a collapse in fees. How have they weathered the storm, and how will they carry their injuries into 2017?
Chinese banks and brokers are taking over the Asian investment banking league tables, as more mainland issuers and investors turn to the international markets. Global rivals need to rethink their approach.
Big banks have lost more than US$60bn in their corporate centres in the last four years. Some critics say the units can mask the true performance of business divisions.
The rise and rise of the passive fund is yet another result of the low interest rate environment. And a worrying one.
A long-term commitment to re-balancing the Chinese economy should make the M&A boom more sustainable. But worries about capital flight and the renminbi’s weakness may force the authorities to put a stop to the party.
Fintech start-ups have mostly played around the edges of investment banks’ core activities – but not for much longer. The global financial full-service model was already creaking, but an Uber-style disruption to front-office activity is no longer a distant threat.
A growing realisation that over-enthusiastic and uncoordinated banking regulation is damaging the real economy, combined with the shock election victory of Donald Trump, is likely to see the regulatory onslaught of the post-financial crisis period lessen in intensity, if not reverse course.
