Loan Ranger

Ah January — a brand new year, a brand new balance sheet to fill and a brand new budget to meet. From the lows of 2012, it seems that everyone across the market is hopeful that volumes can only get better and already there are some silver linings visible around January’s grey clouds.

It’s that time of year again. The nights are long, the Christmas trees are up, and loans bankers just can’t help but try to come up with their most profound statements as they reflect on the year that was.

Saturday December 1 saw Loan Ranger leaping from his bed at the crack of dawn to open the first window on the loans team’s Advent Calendar, counting down to Christmas.

Destiny can be a beautiful thing. Whether it’s a prince pulling a sword from a stone, a zero rising up to become a hero or a financial services professional with the most fitting name imaginable, destiny can be glorious. With this in mind, Loan Ranger presents: Libor Basl, partner, Baker & McKenzie.

Correct us if we’re wrong, but Loan Ranger thought that winter was a time when people locked themselves inside, desperately shielding themselves from the bitter cold and rain?

“Hey, you know how marathons are super fun but they’re just way too short?” is not a sentence you will ever hear Loan Ranger say. But it seems the loan market is made of stronger stuff.

Working hard is one of the most satisfying things an adult can do. To end a day and know you’ve given it your all is the height of what is expected of good people, in a hearty "I’m a Disney character" kind of way.

Loan Ranger is under no illusion that while bankers might be sweet as pie to us, they can be real mean motorscooters in the negotiating room, fighting tooth and nail for decent pricing and better terms.

Loan Ranger is turning out to be quite a reader of crystal balls. Two weeks ago we said that no new LBOs were in the offing — only for a flood of deals to hit the market within days.

Tuesday afternoon at the ranch, and sporcle.com was experiencing record hits. It was the day of the inaugural Société Générale pub quiz and Loan Ranger had a reputation to defend as the sharpest knife in the loan market.

Did last week’s AFME high yield conference offer a shocking prophecy for the future? We’re not talking about the impending dominance of the high yield market over the loan market (we’ve already dealt with that myth here), but something on a rather larger scale. According to the programme, one of the panels was titled “Financing leveraged bail-outs”.