Loans and High Yield

Cineworld announced on Monday it was closing all of its 536 Regal Cinemas in the US and its 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse venues in the UK from Thursday, adding urgency to the company’s search for enough liquidity to see it through the Covid-19 crisis in cinema.

Friday’s confirmation that the Issa brothers, backed by TDR Capital, had won the auction for UK supermarket Asda, catapulted them into the super league of borrowers in European leveraged credit — the handful of entrepreneurs whose appetite for debt surpasses market appetite to lend to a single capital structure.

Indonesian property company Alam Sutera’s move to kick off an exchange offer last week to stave off pressing financial concerns was met with ratings downgrades from two of the three global ratings agencies.

Bank of America has promoted Jeff Tannenbaum, its head of debt capital markets and leveraged finance EMEA, to head of global capital markets for the region.

Better quality high yield borrowers spotted a market window on Tuesday, with Spanish retailer El Corte Ingles and Dutch chemicals firm OCI both launching well-flagged double-B rated bonds on the back of Monday’s stronger trading session.

Karri Vuori has joined UK mid-market M&A firm Cavendish Corporate Finance as a partner.

Engineering Group, an Italian IT services company, has returned to market after pulling a deal in June, for a second attempt at taking out the buyout bridge for its acquisition by Bain Capital and Neuberger Berman.

Lippo Malls Indonesia Retail Trust is in discussions with banks for a S$120m ($87m) loan that will support its acquisition of shopping malls in Indonesia.

China Evergrande Group reached an agreement with a group of strategic investors to avoid upcoming repayments, easing recent concerns on a potential liquidity squeeze for the company.

Research from Bank of America shows European high yield issuers boosted their cash holdings by €97bn year on year, a 60% increase, and a record level for nearly all regions and sectors.

Technical changes to the UK government’s large business support scheme open the way for private equity-owned firms to draw on the facility, but limits on dividends and new indebtedness may still discourage sponsors from using the scheme.

Gabriel Levy will start as Natixis's global head of debt capital markets this week, replacing Michael Haize, who is moving over to the global markets division to become global head of rates and currencies trading.