Loan Ranger

Pressure prompts innovation, and the loan market is showing signs of strain beneath the growing weight of loosening terms, tight pricing and the disappearance of the syndication process in favour of club deals. It's good to see then, that two German banks can put aside their competitive streaks and join forces.

Luxury is an oft-overused word, especially in the world of London press parties. However, the brain struggles to think of a better term to describe the situation of eating apple crisps and drinking sparkling wine in an elevator.

If Germany is known for one thing, it is efficiency. No wonder then, that the sun came out just in time to shine on Commerzbank’s rooftop soiree at the bank’s Gresham Street offices last week.

Summer is here, and at least one senior loans banker has been celebrating by playing something that Loan Ranger likes to call Xtreme Office Frisbee.

Monday mornings are rubbish. So in Loan Ranger’s everlasting quest to provide debt-based joy, we offer today the rare opportunity to experience both smirking Schadenfreude and the chance to feel genuinely good about yourself, thanks to the efforts of a senior loans banker.

Loan Ranger has a lot of time for self-aware comedy. But Germany's DZ Bank took it to bizarre new heights last week at their annual loans market reception, handing guests a palm-sized orange deck chair with a tiny spot reserved for a DZ Bank towel.

There was a time when vampire squids weren’t afraid of anything, but it seems this week that there's a new wolf at the door in the banking world.

Bank holidays should be a blessing to loans bankers, right? The clue about who should benefit from these freebies is right there in the name. It’s a shame that loans bankers’ bosses have other ideas.

Quick, list three things you would absolutely not want to do with your weekend. If you said you’d rather not go to Cardiff to compete in a gruelling pan-European fitness competition, well done on your weirdly specific response. But that’s exactly what Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s David Pepper did on the last weekend of April, and if Pepper is anything like Loan Ranger, it was probably just done to make the rest of us look bad.

When a loans banker misses a phone call first from an investor and then from a journalist, which of the two are they likely to call back quickest?

Loan Ranger had a joyous meeting with a loans banker in Canary Wharf last week. The meeting was a success for two reasons — the sun was shining on the Thames, and the banker in question spent a decent amount of time full-on bitching about a rival lender.

Loan Ranger is used to breaking news to the loan market. What he is less used to is breaking news about deals to bankers actually working on those deals, and what an exquisite delight it was.