Loans and High Yield

Cathay Pacific Airways has sold its first dollar bond in more than 20 years, battling suppressed business over the last two years to raise $650m from the long-overdue deal.

JSW Hydro Energy, a subsidiary of Indian power company JSW Energy, sold its first international bond this week, taking $707m from the green transaction.

Piramal Glass has closed its $355m leveraged buyout loan, receiving strong response from 14 participants.

Monday brought another strong start to the week for European high yield, with six new bonds announced and other deals, such as EQT’s Cerba healthcare financing, set to close this week. Italian issuers led the way, with bonds for International Design Group, Lutech and Cedacri in the market.

Swedish private equity firm EQT launched senior and subordinated bonds on Monday to finance its acquisition of Cerba Healthcare, the diagnostics company headquartered in France.

JP Morgan is running the acquisition financing for Ion Investment Group’s purchase of Italian banking software group Cedacri, a major shift for the finance, technology and data group, which has relied on Credit Suisse and UBS to fund its spree of its debt-fuelled acquisitions. The group also turned to high yield bonds for the first time recently, a major departure for a company which once prized the privacy of the loan market.

Guandong Haid Group Co, a Chinese agricultural and animal husbandry company, is in the loan market with its debut offshore borrowing of up to $400m.

EQT achieved a strong response from investors on Friday when it launched the first sustainability-linked bond from a private equity firm, and only the second from a financial company. The €500m deal is tied to greenhouse gas emission cuts and gender diversity metrics.

French steel parts and distribution company Jacquet Metal Service has launched a further Schuldschein, according to sources. The market is gearing up for somewhat of a renaissance after a moribund 2020 and GlobalCapital understands that 10-15 more transactions are set to be launched in May.

Three regular dollar bond issuers from China were the first out of the gates to tap investors on Thursday following a long holiday in the Mainland.

Golden Energy and Resources drew in investors with an 8.875% yield on its bond on Thursday, allowing the mining company to raise $285m.

Golden Goose, the Italian shoemaker bought by Permira just before the coronavirus pandemic struck Europe, is looking for €470m of senior secured bonds in what may be the last repayment of a bridge facility signed before Covid. Hung bridges for leveraged buyouts were a serious concern for banks at the height of the pandemic but due to governments and central banks supporting the financial markets, lenders sold down the positions successfully — mostly much earlier than Golden Goose, writes Silas Brown.