Debt Pile Looming Over European Firms

I´ll bet that some will damm their debt financed aquisitions & stock buybacks ( for some "amusing" examples see "I Want My Buyback Back" ) ........ I assume that during the coming at least 2 years it won´t be the earnings that will dominate the stockprice .... It will be all about the balance sheet....... The management will be forced from a shareholder value oriented mood to "serve" their new masters aka the bondholders.......



Kann mir gut vostellen das einige inzwischen Ihre schuldenfinanzierten Übernahmewahn & die Aktienrückkäufe bereuen ( einige "amüsante" Beispiele gibt es hier zu bewundern "I Want My Buyback Back" ) ...... Bin mir ziemlich sicher das zumindest auf Sicht von 2 Jahren weniger die Gewinnsituation als die Bilanzqualität das beherrschende Thema der Aktienmärkte sein werden..... Das Management wird zukünftig nicht mehr die Aktionäre sondern die Bondholder in den Mittelpunkt Ihrer "Bemühungen" stellen......

> The trouble is getting even greater when you combine the graph with the spread charts via Mish



> Wie prekär die momentane Lage ist zeigt mehr als eindrucksvoll wenn man die o.g. Grafik mit den nachvolgenden Charts kombiniert Unternehmensanleihen auf Tauchstation via Zeitenwende/Mish



WSJ European companies, already in the middle of an economic downturn, face another uphill struggle as they seek to refinance $242.6 billion of maturing debt over the coming year, according to credit-ratings firm Standard & Poor's.



"Funding pressures in Europe have escalated sharply since September as stress in the global financial system accelerated," the report said.

According to the report, European companies will be forced to pay back or refinance $586.3 billion through 2011, with more than 40% of that debt coming due over the next year.

French nonfinancial corporate issuers account for the largest portion of debt to be refinanced, with 26%, followed closely by the U.K., Germany, Netherlands and Italy, which have a combined share of 79%.

No company rated below single-A has managed to access the bond market in recent months, offering little hope for companies further down the ratings scale

The report examined all debts rated by S&P including bank loans, notes and bonds.

>The banks will have to pray that the companies manage the refinancing of the debt... Otherwise they are forced to tapp corporate bank lines .....

> Die Banken dürften bereits jetzt anfangen zu beten das es möglich sein wird diese fälligen Anleihen zu refinanzieren...... Ansonsten bleibt den Firmen nichts anderes übrig als die bestehenden Kreditlinien der Banken anzuzapfen...... Sicher nicht der glücklichste Umstand wenn nahezu alle Banken dringend auf Ihre Kapitalstärke achten müssen......

Credit terms increasingly tied to risk FT Alphaville - US and European companies renewing short-term credit facilities are being forced to accept terms that link interest payments to their creditworthiness. In recent months, AT&T, Wal-Mart, Caterpillar, Halliburton, Nokia and Novartis have all renewed their short-term financing arrangements, including revolving credit facilities, and found that “relationship pricing” is no longer available. Instead,

companies are finding that banks - which had offered cheap loans to top corporate clients - now price these facilities based on measures of credit risk. In most cases, credit default swaps are being used.

The first deal for this new type of pricing for revolving loans, totalling an estimated $6,000bn worldwide, was done in April

Since then, such terms have become widely used. Banks hope this will discourage companies from tapping these credit lines unless they absolutely need to. Already, at least 20 such deals for 364-day revolving credit facilities – a type of overdraft for companies to ensure access to funds in case markets shut down – have been completed and at least as many are in the pipeline.

Update via Bloomberg Borse Dubai May Refinance $4.2 Billion of Loans at Higher Costs

Borse Dubai Ltd., the Gulf emirate's state-owned operator of exchanges, is in talks to refinance $4.2 billion of loans at interest rates tied to the price of credit- default swaps, raising the cost of the debt, said three bankers with knowledge of the transaction.

The new debt may pay interest of as much as 6 percentage points over the London interbank offered rate on loans for three years, said the bankers, who declined to be named because the negotiations are private. That compares with a margin of 1.1 percentage points on the existing loans, which were used to buy Sweden's OMX AB last year