China acts to boost stock markets

Onex Credit Partners has priced OCP Euro CLO 2023-7, a €351m transaction it had been marketing via arranger Jefferies since the beginning of the month, having found enough demand in the otherwise quiet summer market to sell the mezzanine tranches at the tight end of or inside guidance which was circulated almost three weeks ago. There was no room for tightening on the €217m senior tranche, which was priced as expected at 175bp over three-month Euribor, having previously been marketed in the 175bp area. There had been €10m–€15m of this tranche...

Shipping and vehicle logistics company Wallenius Wilhelmsen printed a NKr1bn (US$94m) sustainability-linked five-year senior unsecured floating-rate note last Thursday. Having announced IPTs at the 350bp area over three-month Nibor, leads Danske Bank, DNB Markets, Nordea and SpareBank 1 Markets refined guidance to 325bp–335bp and priced at the tight end on the back of NKr2.2bn of demand. The company is considering using the proceeds to buy back notes due September 2024 along with refinancing existing debt and general corporate purposes. The...

Workiva became the latest company to refinance an existing convertible bond with a new CB and did so in an impressive way, settling a deep in-the-money CB it repurchased entirely in cash raised from the sale of a new CB. The front-end of the financing saw the regulatory compliance software provider raise an upsized US$625m from a five-year CB priced late on Monday at a 1.25% coupon and 30% conversion premium. Goldman Sachs, as sole bookrunner, had marketed toward a US$525m sum for one day at a 1%–1.5% coupon and 27.5%–32.5% premium. Workiva...

One difficulty surrounding the deSPAC process is that it creates a sponsor overhang that is hard to remove, particularly when so many of the public hosts are trading in the single digits. Alight, the human resource software firm that merged with Bill Foley’s Foley Trasimene Acquisition in late 2021, helped cash out legacy backers Blackstone, Jasmine Ventures and Platinum Falcon via a US$181.1m block sale of stock overnight on Wednesday. Platinum is an investment vehicle of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Jasmine is affiliated with...

Financial technology company Broadridge Financial Solutions has entered into a US$1.3bn three-year term loan. Dated August 17, the loan amends and restates the company’s credit agreement dated March 27 2021. At signing, that facility comprised a US$1bn 18-month term loan and a US$1.55bn three-year term loan. The March 2021 credit agreement backed the company’s acquisition of Swedish trading and capital markets technology company Itiviti Holding. The three-year tranche of the March 2021 loan featured a margin of between 75bp and 125bp over Libor...

Hess Midstream surfaced overnight on Tuesday with a US$288m sell-down by Global Infrastructure Partners, the energy-focused private equity firm’s second cash-out of the master limited partnership this year. Goldman Sachs offloaded its purchase of 10m Hess Midstream shares at US$28.80, the bottom of the US$28.80–$29.80 range marketed and 6% discount to the US$30.65 Tuesday closing price. Hess Midstream shares closed Wednesday’s session post-pricing at US$28.77, slightly below reoffer but comfortably above the US$28.59 price paid on the block...

What may prove to be the last major settlement related to dodgy subprime RMBS underwriting was finally announced last week when UBS agreed to pay a penalty of US$1.44bn to the US Justice Department. The bank settled the civil suit some 15 years after it was brought and up to 17 years after the deals in question were closed – and, perhaps not coincidentally, a few months after it needed the US authorities to sign off on its merger with Credit Suisse. The UBS settlement is the latest of 19 agreed by banks in which they have paid US$72.3bn in...

International Finance Corp has made a series of forays into a number of bond markets over recent days, diversifying its investor base in the process. On August 10, it issued its largest green bond in Canada's Maple market in a push to access domestic investors. The C$1bn (US$737m) three-year was launched with a 4.5% coupon, attracting orders totalling over C$1.5bn, which exceeded expectations. “We were going out thinking we would get about C$500m,” said Flora Chao, IFC’s global head of funding. “We were quite impressed by the level of demand...

US ECM activity heads into a two-week break amid signs that markets are cracking up after this year's strong rally, though bankers remain confident the IPO market will still stage a meaningful rebound in the final part of the year. Stock sales will slow to a crawl in the coming week and next week as investors take some holidays through to Labor Day (September 4). That may be just as well since stocks have stumbled so far in August, in part amid upward pressure on interest rates. Banks are maintaining high expectations for what they might...

Allianz Global Investors, the insurance company's money management division, is pushing ahead with plans to raise at least €1.5bn for a new global private credit fund, a spokesperson said, as investors boost exposure to the asset class, Reuters reported. The company established the Allianz Global Diversified Private Debt Fund II in Luxembourg in mid-June, company filings show. The fund plans to hold its first close before the end of the year, the spokesperson said, meaning it will have secured enough capital to start making investments. Allianz...

AN2 Therapeutics employed a registered direct offering to raise US$70m at a premium to market prices in its first follow-on since its wayward Nasdaq debut in March last year. TD Cowen, Leerink Partners and Evercore acted as placement agents on the confidentially marketed sale of 7.77m shares in the rare disease specialist at US$9.00, 4.2% above Tuesday’s closing price of US$8.64. Investors seem to welcome the offering as a much-needed show of confidence by AN2’s biggest backers, the shares jumping to US$9.25 on Wednesday, though still well...

Transatlantic private equity firm Rhone Capital abandoned its long-delayed plans for an NYSE IPO of Fogo Hospitality, instead opting to sell the owner of the Brazilian steakhouse chain outright to Bain Capital for an undisclosed sum. Rhone’s decision to sell Fogo rather than take it public came despite recent signs of life in the IPO market, especially for consumer companies. There were also hopes that the chain’s plans might get a lift from the recent successes such as Cava (+112%) and Savers Value Village (+41.9%), which both went public in...