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Time for a spring clean?

Institutions holding non-performing loans (“NPLs”) have been and continue to be, under increasing pressure to divest these and “clean up” their balance sheets in order to free up capital, de-risk and preserve market reputation. Usually, a loan facility becomes non-performing when either payments of principal and interest are past due by 90 days or more, or where payments are less than 90 days overdue, it is expected that payments will not be made in full. Alternatively, other loans can also be regarded as non-performing if they are value impaired (e.g. if the borrower has breached key covenants in its facility or if repayment terms have been altered).

Where a borrower is in financial trouble, it may first look to a lender for restructuring options such as extending its facility, foregoing interest payments or deferring repayments. From a bank’s point of view, holding on to NPLs causes a real issue since they increase a bank’s management costs, with frequent analysis required to monitor the financial position of the borrower and its underlying assets. There are also broader repercussions to consider given that NPLs may tend to limit a bank’s ability to lend. It also potentially drives up interest rate margins thereby creating uncertainty. Divesting NPL portfolios at a discount benefits banks who recoup some value, gain liquidity and distance themselves from the risk factors associated with holding onto distressed assets, such as a potential downgrades in its credit rating or a greater chance of bank insolvency.

Why take on a bad apple?Continue Reading NPLs – Car Boot Sale!

So it’s been just over a year since Fitch issued their press release confirming that as a matter of policy it would not provide rating agency confirmations (RACs) during the replacement of special servicers on EMEA CMBS transactions and indeed, just over a year since our last blog on the matter, entitled “What the Fitch??!”.

At the end of that blog we observed that it was going to be a fun year for CMBS – and wasn’t it just.
Continue Reading Clash of the Titan 2007-1

With yet another foreign convertible bond default hitting our desk, we cannot help but wonder what the future has in store for Asian convertible bonds and debt capital markets restructurings.  This is particularly relevant when you consider that Indian companies and banks issued foreign currency bonds aggregating up to approximately $6.3 billion in the first quarter of 2013.  This momentum continued throughout 2013 with Indian companies expected to raise another $10 billion by the beginning of 2014 by issuing foreign currency bonds in the international capital markets.

The Story so far

The convertible bond has always been a favourite of corporate India.  Turning back the clock, one would recall that, particularly between 2005 and 2008, several companies across multiple industries used a variety of structures to access the international debt capital markets by issuing foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) to investors. Such issuers included National Thermal Power Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Power Finance Corporation, Tata Steel, Tata Communications, Vedanta, Bharti Airtel, Amtek Auto and Rural Electrification Corporation (just a few names amongst an endless list of issuers back in the day).

Fast forward to 2014 and FCCB defaults have dominated recent headlines (think major companies like Sterling Biotech, KSL and Industries and Suzlon Energy).
Continue Reading Indian Bond Defaults and Bond Restructurings: More Scheming Ahead?

EMIR’s trade reporting obligations come into effect on 12 February and counterparties to derivative transactions are currently scrambling to ensure they have all the appropriate systems in place to ensure compliance. For large financial institutions, this has already involved many months of hard work and, even still, many are not optimistic about meeting next month’s deadline. At the other end of the spectrum, the administrative burden on one-off or low volume commercial counterparties should be relatively light, and ensuring that the reporting obligations are covered not therefore too taxing.

What then of SPVs – which are neither operational goliaths like their derivative counterparties nor autonomous commercial entities capable of assessing the implications on cost, resources and time of each option open to them?
Continue Reading You Don’t Need EMIRacle – Trade Reporting for SPVs Made Easy

So called ‘sunshine backed bonds’ are one of the newest and most exciting asset classes to enter the asset-backed securities market since the financial crisis. The resurgence of the market has led to a number of esoteric ABS issuances in recent months but it was solar energy that seemed most ripe for applying securitisation techniques (which provide an especially powerful financing tool). Indeed, given how this financing technique revolutionised the mortgage finance market 30 years ago, it now seems poised to play a role in transforming the renewable energy markets across Europe.

The case for securitising solar

In essence, securitisation allows companies to access the capital markets and in so doing to bring down their cost of capital and improve liquidity. Pools of illiquid assets are sold to bankruptcy-remote vehicles which then issue bonds to investors which are backed by the pool of assets. The originator of the assets is able to turn illiquid assets into saleable securities and in so doing shift those assets, and the risk of ownership, off its balance sheet in return for new finance.
Continue Reading Sunshine backed bonds – time to look on the sunny side?

On 28 January the competent authority for supervising securities in Greece, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC), made use of its powers of intervention in exceptional circumstances and decided to introduce yet another emergency measure under Article 20 of Regulation No 236/2012, also known as the EU Short Selling Regulation. As defined in the Regulation, short selling consists in the sale of securities that the seller does not own, with the intention of buying back an identical security at a later point in time in order to be able to deliver the security.
Continue Reading Hellenic Capital Market Commission – New Emergency Prohibition under the EU Short Selling Regulation

There are two points that must be made in order to get you from where this idea started to where it is today and why we believe we are in a great position to put this project into practice.  It is not as though I will know if you skip the next two paragraphs to get there but if you do not, there is a point to all this.

The First:  We offer our services to people not to the titles they hold.  The titleholders that formed a large part of our client base leading up to September 2008 moved on while their titles were extinguished.  When those very titleholders resurfaced elsewhere in different roles yet still very much operating in the capital markets, we were purposefully in a position where the whole of our team had the ability to advise all such parties even if increasingly from a different perspective. 
Continue Reading May we sell your services please?

I was encouraged to see Virgin Money announce its second securitisation of the year, Gosforth 2012-2, particularly so as Virgin Money is also one of the 30 or so banks that have now signed up to the Bank of England’s Funding for Lending Scheme.

The Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) was introduced by the Bank of England back in July to reduce funding costs for banks and building societies to stimulate lending to UK households and small businesses. Under the scheme, between August 2012 and January 2014 any participating bank or building society can borrow UK Treasury Bills for a 4-year period in exchange for providing eligible collateral as security. Broadly speaking, the eligible collateral will include certain loans, securities and other assets also eligible under the Bank of England’s Discount Window Facility. The costs to participating banks and building societies for this lending depends on how much lending they do into the real economy but can be as low as 0.25% per year. If this results in banks lending more to the real economy at better rates and borrowers have the appetite to take on such debt sufficiently to make a noticeable impact, then that’s great …. mostly.
Continue Reading Securitisation: a nationalised pastime?

As was common at the time of the inception of the transaction, Danske Bank A/S (Danske) had provided a liquidity facility (LF) on a commercial mortgage-backed securitisation issued by the issuer, Gemini (Eclipse 2006-3) plc (Gemini).  Due to the subsequent plethora of downgrades that have followed the financial crisis (from which the liquidity facility provider did not escape), a liquidity stand-by drawing of £64,000,000 was made by Gemini. The liquidity facility provider was entitled under the liquidity facility to recover any increased costs as a result of the application of Basel II (as implemented in Denmark) to the LF.  A subsequent withdrawal by Moody’s of the separate rating obtained in relation to the LF caused a rise in the increased costs due to Danske being required to set aside more capital for regulatory purposes.
Continue Reading The Liquidity Eclipse

I suspect I may have been alone amongst viewers of the recent Singapore Grand Prix in that, rather than marvelling at the brilliance of Sebastian Vettel’s driving skills, my thoughts instead were on the world’s largest bankruptcy – Lehman Brothers. For those who have not been living and breathing the consequences of the financial sector’s greatest ever failure, the link between the cars and glamour of F1 and an insolvent investment bank may not be immediately obvious. However if you were to know that Lehman Brothers is still the second largest shareholder in the sport, with a 15.3 per cent stake in Formula One’s holding company, then the connection becomes clearer. Given the fourth anniversary of the bank’s demise was a few days ago, it is also a good time to think about how far we’ve come since the dark days of Autumn 2008, a time when many thought the world as we knew it was coming to an end. So, four years on, what have we learnt?
Continue Reading Lehman Car Crash