In primary markets, investment grade and emerging market bankers told GlobalCapital that no deals had been put on hold or even reconsidered in light of the outcome of the vote. Though one banker said that he would "stop and take a breather if somebody asked me to do something on very aggressive terms," on Wednesday.
Secondary loan trading saw a small reaction early on Wednesday morning but had rebalanced by midday, according to one London-based loan trader.
"First thing this morning, the loan market was quiet as people digested the news," he said. "With a marginal widening, we are now back to the same price context as yesterday."
"The biggest concern still is that there is a lot of cheap money out there, if you don’t put it to work you are going to get penalised because of the low interest rates. If you look at IG loans, you find people are desperately looking to buy loans and a few people are looking for short dated risk to put money to work in EM."
One senior loans banker in the Middle East said that his market had not been impacted.
“It’s a bit of a damp squib so far.”
The banker said that the investment grade quality borrowers that dominate the Gulf loan market would not have their funding lines put at risk based solely on a Trump win.
"For the loan market it won’t mean a lot, it is always lagging market," he said. "In the Gulf we don't know what the impact of Trump's policies will be yet, that doesn’t start until January."
A senior loan banker at a European institution said that he had not been renegotiating terms on any deals in the market since the Trump win.
"We will wait to draw breath," he said. "Looking at the numbers things aren’t quite as bad as one could have imagined. The loan market is very resilient."
Another banker said that any loss of appetite to underwrite loans at the moment would be attributed to the end of year holidays, rather than the result of the elections.
"You wouldn’t want to launch an underwrite over Christmas anyway," said a senior loans banker in London.
Brexit apathy
A number of bankers said the indifference of the loan market in response to the UK’s vote to leave the European Union in June was a sign of its resilience and it was that quality that shone through this week.
"There has already been so much uncertainty and the markets have continued, Brexit hasn’t stopped anything happening," said one.
“We are in the midst of several leveraged transactions,” said one head of loans at a French bank on Thursday. “Neither the terms, leverage or pricing have changed one iota — it’s even more of a non-event than the Brexit vote.”
(For more coverage of leverage loans, see separate story)