Loan Pricing
Feeding the Chickens
“I believe in being fully transparent,” we told our spouse, negotiating NFL playoff viewing rights this past weekend. “It’s working,” she said. “I can see right through you.” In that same spirit of confession, your correspondent reminds readers of last week’s forecast regarding fund flows. We predicted outflows from retail loan accounts, which had been…
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The Price of Everything (Last of a Series)
“US credit markets are grinding to a halt.” So warned the front page of Monday’s Financial Times. Followers of this column will recognize the ensuing list of culprits – money pouring out of loan funds, falling secondary loan prices and resultant choppiness in the primary market, and stalled high-yield bond issuance. Credit markets may be…
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The Price of Everything (Second of a Series)
Loan prices for the most liquid leveraged names continued to drift lower this week in the wake of continued volatility in the public markets. This despite – or perhaps because of – a Goldilocks-flavored jobs report last Friday. Labor data showed 155k in new jobs for November. Not great, but enough to help ease worries…
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The Price of Everything (First of a Series)
Being off-kilter made it world-famous, but that condition is slowly being remedied. Almost since it was built in 1173, the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been sinking and slanting. But recent repair efforts by Italian engineers seem to be paying off. The 190-foot celebrated structure has now eased to the vertical by 1.5 inches. Not…
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The New Price is Right
Amid all the wondrous frolicking enjoyed by many this past holiday weekend, we were reminded again of one corollary to good parenting: Otherwise well-mannered children get into trouble when not occupied with constructive activities. That observation came to mind on reading an interesting note yesterday from content partners S&P Capital IQ. They report that May…
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The Art of Pricing Loans (Last of a Series)
Last week we noted the coincidence between “Pi Day” and the birth date of Albert Einstein, but pondered any π connection with that other March 14 celebrity, Billy Crystal. One astute TLL reader (and keen observer of the pop scene) solved that riddle for us: Https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmha1NsQRU. Well done. In closing out our series on loan pricing,…
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The Art of Pricing Loans (Fourth of a Series)
We noted with interest the “Pi Day” celebrations last Saturday. 3/14/15 echoed that mathematical constant (the definition of which escapes us for the moment), spawned dozens of matrimonials, and marked the birth of Albert Einstein. March 14 was also the birthday of Billy Crystal, though we haven’t figured out the π connection there yet. Speaking…
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The Art of Pricing Loans (Third of a Series)
Pricing flex is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of leveraged loans. Prior to 1998 lead arrangers would price loans weeks, sometimes months, before launching transactions into the market. Because many lenders in the syndicate traditionally ended up being relationship banks, underwriters had relatively little risk those banks would flake on a deal if market…
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The Art of Pricing Loans (Second of a Series)
Call it Bother of the Bride. The singer/guitarist of a wedding band posts a picture of the mother’s blue and black dress on Tumblr. Apparently other band members said it looked white and gold, so she wanted second opinions. Well, she got them – 500 within a half-hour. Then things went viral. Buzzfeed had almost…
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