Record global M&A activity in Q1
Housing market scores a ten again
'Covenant-lite' diet causes no extra spread for hungry leveraged loan investors
In my catch up reading from holiday (Argentina – stunning and very very cheap!), I noticed that World Directories, a European telephone directory company, has re-financed its euro-denominated leverage loan to be ‘covenant-lite’. Covenants are very important for us as bond investors. This is because they impose restrictions on a company’s management by preventing management from undertaking acti…
Read the articleLessons to be learnt from over the Pond?
Credit must go to Gordon Brown
The Chancellor has consistently stated that his number one aim is to maintain and entrench economic stability in the UK….
Read the articleUS recession averted? And Japanese land prices finally go up!
Inflation rises again – but what is
As a follow-on to Jim’s note on the rise in UK inflation and the change in the basket of goods used to measure inflation, I think it’s worth asking what actually constitutes inflation?
The Bank of England traditionally used the Retail Price Index (RPI) as its inflation measure. In 1992, Norman Lamont brought in RPIX inflation (RPI excluding mortgage interest rate payment), and targeted RPIX of…
Read the articleUK February Inflation Snapshot
Value at Risk – a new way to compare risks across funds
Value at Risk, or “VaR”, is a relatively new risk measure for the asset management industry, but is one that is rapidly becoming a benchmark for risk. The Investment Management Association (IMA) has already ruled that “sophisticated funds” (funds using sophisticated derivative strategies) must use VaR techniques, and it is likely that VaR will become a leading risk measurement in the asset mana…
Read the articleIcelandic farce continues
Fitch ratings agency, whose note on Iceland last year originally kicked off the Icelandic banking crisis, yesterday downgraded Iceland’s government bonds from AA- to A+. The Icelandic krona fell 1% against the sterling on the news. Fitch said that “the downgrade reflects new data on the balance of payments and the international investment position that points to a material deterioration in Icel…
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