The market gathered for the Lloyds loan reception in the heart of the City of London last week.
Lloyds’ loan chief Ian Baggott gave us all a hearty welcome and reminded attendees that whatever the state of global political affairs the loan market would still be there to support its clients.
The Ranger first bumped into Toby Walker, Crédit Agricole’s infrastructure distribution head. Walker described how he has been rushed off his feet of late, after the Brexit vote spurred many UK clients to tie up their financingahead of the projected March 2017 date for triggering UK's official divorce from the EU.
Next, we encountered Natixis’s Chris Lovgren who was somewhat surprised (to put in mildly) by the identity of his native US's new president-elect and described a sense of despair among his fellow liberal Americans.
In the emerging markets, we met MUFG’s Raouf Jundi talking with Ayman Foda from Banque Misr Paris. Foda reflected on the harsh outlook for the Egyptian economy.
“It’s just a different country to the Egypt of a few years ago,” he told the Ranger.
Though the party hummed with a nervous excitement for the year ahead, the camaraderie of the loan market remained.
As the Ranger waited to collect spurs and chaps from the cloakroom, a bubbly Martin Crocker, now of QNB, reminded us: “They’re all a nice bunch, the loan market.”
