Loan Ranger

Loan Ranger has often thought about including a few extra categories in the EuroWeek annual syndicated loans and leveraged finance awards. Perhaps some personal awards to recognise the individuals around the loan market —maybe most likely to exceed his expenses account limits in one lunch? Or most elaborate email signature?

At last, and only a couple of months late, it feels like spring has sprung in London. The sun is shining, new shoots of growth are pushing through and new loan deals are hatching all over the place...

There are two universal truths about the City of London — people will always be inexplicably surprised when winter refuses to make way for spring in a timely manner, and Loan Ranger will never turn down a chance to expand his horizons (and waistline) over an evening learning about wine and cheese.

The syndicated loans market is, by its very nature, a private, secretive world of clandestine intrigue, with whispers and rumours of deals, pricing and mandates whirling in hushed voices. Working in the loans sector is only one step away from being in the secret services — at least that’s what Loan Ranger likes to think when he’s reassuring himself he’s only one step away from James Bond.

Just last week Loan Ranger was boasting about just how easy credit analysis was. After most of the market summed up the potential long-term attractiveness of the Heinz transaction as “well, it’s ketchup, innit?”, it all seemed so easy.

Credit analysis has always seemed like a fairly hard task to Loan Ranger. Calculating exactly what something is worth, quantifying the risks involved in investing — all that forensic trawling through accounts and swotting up on specific sectors sounds like a lot of hard work.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, the most romantic day of the year, the syndicated loans market gathered in London’s Guildhall to profess its love for its favourite deals and banks of the last year.

Loan Ranger is dusting off his best Stetson, polishing his spurs and putting an extra hole in the widest extremes of his belt, all in advance of EuroWeek’s annual syndicated loans and leveraged finance awards dinner on Wednesday this week.

Loan Ranger and the rest of the ranch are used to hearing "no comment". We have lost track of the number of times that we have unearthed some really juicy information on a deal, only to be given a (usually) polite but firm “there is no way in a million years I will ever talk to you about this and even mentioning that deal on the phone means there’s an alarm going off in the compliance office”.

Loan Ranger’s inflated sense of self-importance was on overdrive this week as it seemed that the entire emerging markets loan market had conspired — conspired! — to show Loan Ranger up.

With the EuroWeek Loans Dinner swiftly approaching (get your tickets soon, folks!), the task of selecting the menu for the evening falls to Loan Ranger. Now, we’re sure you can imagine that this is a drudging, horrible task — tasting all the delectable dishes, selecting from the finest wines...

London, under its thin covering of snow, looked very black and white on Monday morning. But then syndicated loans are used to having such a binary view of the world.