News reached us on North Carolina’s Outer Banks of an unusual find in an Egyptian tomb. Archeologists discovered a “mysterious white substance” in pots from the burial site of Ptahmes, a 13th century B.C. official. Chemical analysis proved it was cheese. Past Egyptologists have made similar findings. In 1942 one team reported something dating back…
For those of us with liberal arts degrees, the topic can be a sensitive one. We’re talking about those published surveys showing the best-and-worst paying college majors. Inevitably, engineers rule, and this year is no exception. According to a chart courtesy our friends at the Daily Shot [link], six of the top ten best paying…
The San Antonio Aquarium was the site last week of an unusual heist. A horn shark was swiped from a petting pool by two men and a woman posing as employees of a marine salt supplier. They made off with the foot-and-a half long fish in a baby stroller. Police recovered the shark, named Miss…
To the best of our knowledge, the village of Innaarsuit, Greenland (pop. 169) is not on any “Best Summer Vacation” lists. Being in the Arctic Circle, it’s cold and dark most of the year. Not much exciting going on. But that has changed in a dramatic fashion. Last month an iceberg weighing 11 million tons…
Despite continued strong deal flow this month, conditions in the leveraged loan market remain constructive for issuers. Yes, there’s been push-back on specific transactions, as we’ve been highlighting. But cash keeps flowing into retail funds and new CLOs keep ramping. That’s providing more fuel to the broadly syndicated financings fire. The middle market is also…
Every now and then stuff happens in leveraged lending that reassures us things we’ve learned about the market are actually true. Such was the case last Friday when a big bank credit trading desk noted unusual data on retail loan fund flows. Weekly outflows of $3.5 billion had been reported. That would have been a…
“July 4th is the worst holiday,” one of our friends declared as our families sat watching the jaw-dropping fireworks display last Wednesday evening in Newport, RI. Huh? “Think about it,” he explained. “Now the summer will zoom by. Kids back in school last week of August. Then Labor Day. A month later, Halloween. Before you…
“2018 will be a good year for loans.” Back in January, that was the way we characterized what to expect in leveraged loan land for the year ahead. At the half-way mark, our forecast seems to be holding true. According to Thomson Reuters LPC, volume for the entire loan syndication market in the US hit…
There’s nothing that takes the froth off an issuer-friendly market faster than a growing pipeline. Absent some kind of global galactic event like a meteor strike or Iceland winning the World Cup, it’s good old-fashioned supply that impacts demand. In part, it’s a matter of band-width. Loan underwriting, even for liquid, on-the-run, broadly syndicated names,…
It’s ironic. Just as the economy seems to be picking up steam and the Fed is ratcheting up rates to stay ahead of inflation, the prospect of additional tariffs and trade wars risks putting a damper on the whole party. A recent survey of middle market dealmakers by Antares Capital (and featured by our friends…