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| Friday, November 20, 2009 |
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ANALYSIS
March 2, 2009
Sagging Index no longer reflects what’s going on in the market, some say, Replacements? Google it, to start.
March 2, 2009
Downward price spiral will actually boost the cost of capital for most companies. CFOS, take note.
March 2, 2009
The latest bailout at AIG could be a preview of how the president will deal with Wall Street.
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March 2, 2009 12:01 AM ET
(Bloomberg)
Granted, the month ended with a flurry of dismal news, including General Motors reporting a loss of $31 billion for 2008, Citigroup nearing near-nationalization and predictions Bank of America could be joining it. Fourth quarter U.S. GDP was also revised from a 3.8% decline to a 6.2% plummet, the worst performance since 1982. But there was some good news, as well. Last week, there were no new corporate defaults, the first week this year that’s happened, according to Standard & Poor’s. The year-to-date tally, however, sits at 32 defaults around the globe, triple the number in the same period a year earlier. And defaults are universally expected to accelerate considerably as the year goes on. While looming defaults will make the debt markets an unwelcoming place for junk credits, investors have been showing a voracious appetite for all things investment grade. Proof: non-financial investment-grade companies raised $19.3 billion in proceeds through 16 issuances last week, Thomson Reuters data showed, capping a record month for such offerings. Big debt offerings last week by Chevron ($5 billion), Abbott Laboratories ($3 billion) and Hewlett-Packard ($2.8 billion) helped bring the non-financial investment-grade issuance total to $62 billion in February, according to Thomson Reuters. The biggest offering last month was by Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding, which raised $16.4 billion to help finance its takeover of Genentech. The U.S. government also said it was having some new success with old tricks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced on Thursday that it was able to unload $1.45 billion of performing and non-performing residential and commercial construction loans from the failed First National Bank of Nevada in distressed markets through two private/public partnership transactions. In the transactions, the FDIC retained an 80% interest in the assets with the winning bidders—Diversified Business Strategies and Stearns Bank—picking up an initial 20% stake. Once performance thresholds are met, the FDIC's interest drops to 60%. Future expenses and income will be shared based on the percentage ownership of the purchaser and the FDIC. “The FDIC is drawing on its previous successes and those of the Resolution Trust Corporation,” said James Wigand, deputy director, division of resolutions and receiverships, in a statement. “During the last banking crisis, when asset values were similarly difficult to ascertain, these types of structures ultimately resulted in superior recoveries relative to the then-depressed market valuations.” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has also proposed a plan that would involve private/public partnerships to buy as much as $1 trillion in troubled assets from banks. The details of that plan have not yet been made public. For its part, the FDIC has pulled off five private/public transactions in the past year, selling $3.2 billion in assets. There was good news for financial institutions in the commercial paper market as well, where total paper outstanding rose for the first time since the week ending Jan. 7, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Financial institutions, which have been largely been cut off from tapping the short-term debt market since Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September, saw their total paper outstanding rise 1.7% for the week ended Feb. 25. That rise comes after six consecutive weeks of declining short-term issuance. Still, with current paper outstanding at a bit over $600 billion for financial institutions, the market remains far smaller than before Lehman’s demise, when total outstanding balances typically exceeded $800 billion. In another sign that banks are having success in selling such debt in the open markets, the Fed’s holdings of commercial paper decreased for the fifth straight week, falling $4.1 billion from the previous week, averaging $246.2 billion for the week of Feb. 25. The Fed’s commercial paper holdings are down 26% since the beginning of the year. At the same time, the Fed’s balance sheet as a whole has gotten a little lighter. It now has $1.9 trillion in assets, down 15% since the end of 2008. However, it is more than double where it stood a year earlier. But, in times like these, progress is progress.
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