Thursday, October 29, 2015

Friday October 30 Housing and Economic stories


Treasury Considers Radical Plan to Help Puerto Rico - (www.nytimes.com) The proposal calls for the federal government to help Puerto Rico collect and account for local tax revenues from the island's businesses and residents, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the proposal. An inability to collect all the taxes owed is widely seen as contributing to Puerto Rico's debt crisis. The tax proceeds would be placed in a "lockbox" overseen by the Treasury and eventually paid out by the Treasury to the holders of the new bonds that Puerto Rico would issue in the proposed exchange. Since the Treasury would effectively become the paying agent for the new bonds, they would be more attractive than the bonds that creditors now hold.'' ... [But] ... "Right now, Puerto Ricans don't even like to pay taxes to their own government," said one person with knowledge of the discussions. If the I.R.S. were to suddenly replace the local tax authorities and try to gather up the money for debt service, "people would say, `Go to hell. I'm not paying the U.S. government.' "

How Banks Funded the U.S. Oil Boom and (So Far) Escaped the Bust - (www.bloomberg.com) When Whiting Petroleum needed cash earlier this year as oil prices plummeted, JPMorgan Chase, its lead lender, found investors willing to step in. The bank helped Whiting sell $3.1 billion in stocks and bonds in March. Whiting used almost all the money to repay the $2.9 billion it owed JPMorgan and its 25 other lenders. The proceeds also covered the $45 million in fees Whiting paid to get the deal done, regulatory filings show. Analysts expect Whiting, one of the largest producers in North Dakota’s Bakken shale basin, to spend almost $1 billion more than it earns from oil and gas this year. The company has sold $300 million in assets, reduced the number of rigs drilling for oil to eight from a high of 24, and announced plans to cut spending by $1 billion next year. Eric Hagen, a Whiting spokesman, says the company has “demonstrated that it is taking appropriate steps to manage within the current oil price environment.” Whiting has said it will be in a position next year to have its capital spending of $1 billion equal its cash flows with an oil price of $50 a barrel.

'Bear claw' will strike the market again: Yamada - (www.cnbc.com)  "What we are seeing now is leadership in a lot of depressed stocks," said Yamada. Energy, which has been the worst-performing sector on the year, has suddenly emerged as a winner this quarter. The sector is up nearly 13 percent since Oct. 1 and is the best performer in the S&P 500 during that period. "While we're rallying we're seeing deterioration in some of the [former] leaders," she added. "One would suggest those rallies are not sustainable." For Yamada, it's only a matter of time before the S&P 500 hits the next level of resistance, and investors should be prepared for what could be the start of sharp selling. "A lot of these rallies tend to bring us to a place of complacency before the bear claw may come out again to strike," she warned. "We are skeptical of this rally."

Corporate America's Epic Debt Binge Leaves $119 Billion Hangover - (www.bloomberg.com)  The Federal Reserve’s historically low borrowing rate isn’t benefiting corporate America like it used to. It’s more expensive for even the most creditworthy companies to borrow or refinance even as the Fed has kept its benchmark at near-zero the last seven years. Companies have loaded up on debt. They owe more in interest than they ever have, while their ability to service what they owe, a metric called interest coverage, is at its lowest since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.  The deterioration of balance-sheet health is “increasingly alarming” and will only worsen if earnings growth continues to stall amid a global economic slowdown, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. credit strategists led by Lotfi Karoui. Since corporate credit contraction can lead to recession, high debt loads will be a drag on the economy if investors rein in lending, said Deutsche Bank AG analysts led by Oleg Melentyev, the bank’s U.S. credit strategy chief. “The benefit of lower yields for corporate issuers is fading,” said Eric Beinstein, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s head of U.S. high-grade strategy.

Walmart's entire business model is crumbling – (www.businessinsider.com) This week, Walmart's shares crashed after the company reported a disappointing profit outlook. Profits will fall 6% to 12% next year, the company said. And the retailer's situation is likely to get worse rather than better, according to many analysts. Until now, Walmart has been able to make huge profits by keeping worker wages low and using its size to negotiate cheaper prices than competitors, Brian Sozzi at The Street writes. But the retail landscape is changing, and Walmart is increasingly irrelevant. "New guidance reflects that Walmart's competitive edge — historically largely assortment and price — has faded relative to purveyors of extreme value (warehouse clubs, hard discounters) or extreme convenience (dollar stores, hard discounters), as e-commerce has neutralized the impact of selection," Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Fassler wrote in a note to clients.



Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Thursday October 29 Housing and Economic stories


Puerto Rico, Treasury in Talks to Restructure Island’s Debt - (online.wsj.com) Under plan, commonwealth would issue ‘superbond’ administered by Treasury or third party that would help restructure $72 billion of debt. Puerto Rico and U.S. officials are discussing the issuance of a “superbond” possibly administered by the U.S. Treasury Department that would help restructure the commonwealth’s $72 billion of debt, people familiar with the plan said. Under the plan, the Treasury or a designated third party would administer an account holding at least some of the island’s tax collections. Funds in the account would be used to pay holders of the superbond, which would be issued to existing Puerto Rico bondholders in exchange for outstanding debt at a negotiated ratio. Investors would receive less debt, likely taking an effective “haircut” on the value of their holdings, but would have higher expectations for getting repaid.

Latest Symptom of Brazil's Misery: Once-Great IPO Market Is Dead - (www.bloomberg.com) Brazil’s IPO market is dead. Once the hottest emerging market for initial public offerings after China, Latin America’s biggest economy isn’t even in the top 15 anymore. The nation’s lone IPO this year -- FPC Par Corretora de Seguros SA -- brought in just $229 million. That’s less than the amount raised in markets like Poland or Trinidad & Tobago and it’s not even 1 percent of the total from 2007, the very peak of Brazil’s go-go days. Three other would-be issuers -- all of them state-backed -- have scrapped their plans to go public in 2015. It’s a dramatic turnaround for a country that was once the place to be for foreign investors seeking to take advantage of massive oil discoveries, surging agricultural exports and an up-and-coming consumer base that’s the second largest in the Americas. These days, Brazilian companies are more likely to de-list than go public as a sweeping corruption scandal, a crippling recession and political turmoil wipe out $290 billion in market value this year alone.

Companies Eyeing Public Offerings Reckon With Inhospitable Market  - (www.nytimes.com) One highly anticipated initial public offering came up short of expectations on Wednesday while another was delayed, illustrating how challenging the market has become for stock debutants. Other planned offerings have been delayed or canceled outright in recent weeks. While the I.P.O. plans of the fast-growing mobile payments company Square and the sports car maker Ferrari have generated interest in the market, the troubled offerings raise questions about the reception they and others prepared to go public will receive. Given its large size, First Data, another payments company, has been seen as a bellwether for the current I.P.O. market. The company, owned by theprivate equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, had been seeking to raise as much as $3.2 billion. But Wednesday evening, First Data priced its offering at $16 a share — well below its expected price range of $18 to $20. Also on Wednesday, the supermarket chain Albertsons decided to delay pricing its stock sale, people briefed on the matter said.

World's Biggest Leveraged ETF Halts Orders on Liquidity Concern - (www.bloomberg.com)  The world’s largest leveraged exchange-traded fund is getting too big for the market it was designed to track. Nomura Asset Management Co. will halt subscription orders for its Next Funds Nikkei 225 Leveraged Index ETF and two other funds from Friday, it said in a statement on its website. The money manager, which relies on the futures market to deliver two times the daily return of Japan’s most famous stock index, said liquidity isn’t deep enough to ensure it can meet that target. Surging inflows from individual investors have made the Nikkei 225 ETF one of the biggest players in Japan’s futures market, sparking concern among some analysts that the fund’s trades are exacerbating price swings. Assets under management have doubled in just five months to 734 billion yen ($6.16 billion), even as the benchmark index fell 13 percent from this year’s peak in June.

Scientists already had major doubts about Theranos — and now the $10 billion company is in a full-on crisis - (www.businessinsider.com) The controversial startup Theranos captured the business and media worlds' attention with its description of a revolutionary new blood test, one that required just a fingerprick instead of a needle in the arm, and one in which results would be available within hours. But while the company opened its first lab testing centers, pulled together a board full of prominent former government officials, and received a valuation that now equals $10 billion, scientists continued to ask questions about how and whether its "revolutionary" technology worked. An investigative report in The Wall Street Journal published Thursday raises more doubts, with former employees reportedly telling The Journal that Theranos at the end of last year was using its new technology, referred to as "Edison," for only a small fraction of blood tests. One anonymous former employee told The Journal that at the end of 2014, the company ran 15 tests using new technology compared with 190 tests run in a traditional way with a normal needle.




Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Wednesday October 28 Housing and Economic stories


Germany Sells Notes at Sub-Zero Yields as Mizuho Eyes ECB Limits - (www.bloomberg.com) Germany sold five-year government debt with a negative yield for the first time since April amid speculation that the Bundesbank may reach its limit on some bond purchases months before the intended completion of the European Central Bank’s stimulus plan. Benchmark German 10-year bunds advanced along with their euro-area peers as European stocks fell for a third day, boosting demand for fixed-interest assets. The ECB tweaked its 1.1 trillion-euro ($1.3 trillion) quantitative-easing program last month by raising its cap on some of the bonds it can buy to 33 percent per security from 25 percent, President Mario Draghi said on Sept. 3. The increase was applied to those bonds not bound by collective-action clauses, or CACs.

Illinois Will Delay Pension Payment Because of Cash Shortage - (www.bloomberg.com) Illinois will delay payments to its pension fund as a prolonged budget impasse causes a cash shortage, Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger said. The spending standoff between Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and Democratic legislative leaders has extended into its fourth month with no signs of ending. Munger said her office will postpone a $560 million retirement-fund payment next month, and may make the December contribution late. “This decision is choosing the least of a number of bad options,” Munger told reporters in Chicago on Wednesday. “For all intents and purposes, we are out of money now.” Munger said the pension systems will be paid in full by the end of the fiscal year in June. The state still is making bond payments, and retirees are receiving checks, she said.

Obama Administration Hits Back at Student Debtors Seeking Relief - (www.bloomberg.com)  On a day when Democratic presidential candidates sparred in a national debate over who would do more to help indebted students, the U.S. government launched a new attack on student debtors seeking loan relief. On Tuesday, the Department of Education intervened in the case of Robert Murphy, an unemployed 65-year-old who has waged a three-year legal battle to erase his student loans in bankruptcy. Unlike almost every single form of consumer debt, student loans can be erased only in very rare circumstances. Murphy’s case, which is currently being heard in a federal court in Boston, could make things a little easier for certain borrowers. A win for Murphy would relieve him of $246,500 in debt and could loosen the standard used to determine how desperate someone needs to be to qualify for relief. The court asked the Education Department to weigh in on the matter. In a document submitted to the court on Tuesday, government lawyers urged the federal judges not to cede any ground to borrowers who say they are in dire financial straits. Doing so would imperil “the fiscal stability of the loan program” that has existed for half a century. The Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The Next China Default Could Be Days Away as Steel Firms Suffer - (www.bloomberg.com) Another week, another Chinese debt guessing game. This time it’s the steel industry’s turn, as investors wonder if a potential bond default by Sinosteel Co. is an omen of things to come amid slowing demand for the metal used in everything from cars to construction. The state-owned steel trader, whose parent warned of financial stress last year, may have to honor 2 billion yuan ($315 million) of principal next Tuesday when bondholders can exercise an option forcing the notes’ redemption two years before they mature. If that should happen, China Merchants Securities Co. thinks the firm will struggle to repay. A default would be the first by a Chinese steel company in the local bond market, which has had five missed payments this year, according to China International Capital Corp. Premier Li Keqiang is allowing more defaults to weed out the weakest firms as he seeks to rebalance a slowing economy. Steel issuers’ revenue fell about 20 percent in the first half from a year earlier and over half of the firms suffered losses, according to China Investment Securities Co.

Goldman Said Struggling to Sell Concordia Debt Amid Pharma Rout - (www.bloomberg.com)  Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is facing an uphill battle in selling almost $2.8 billion of debt for Concordia Healthcare Corp. amid a drug-pricing controversy in the pharmaceutical industry, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The Canadian company is trying to finance the purchase of drugmaker Amdipharm Mercury Ltd. Underwriters led by Goldman Sachs are finding tepid demand for a $1.1 billion term loan and a 500 million-pound ($762 million) loan they are marketing to back the takeover, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. They also plan to issue as much as $950 million of bonds.  Concordia, whose banks have committed to the financing, intends to complete the acquisition next week. Marija Mandic, a Concordia spokeswoman and Michael DuVally, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, declined to comment.




Monday, October 26, 2015

Tuesday October 27 Housing and Economic stories


Oil Sands Boom Dries Up in Alberta, Taking Thousands of Jobs With it - (www.nytimes.com) At a camp for oil workers here, a collection of 16 three-story buildings that once housed 2,000 workers sits empty. A parking lot at a neighboring camp is now dotted with abandoned cars. Withoil prices falling precipitously, capital-intensive projects rooted in the heavy crude mined from Alberta’s oil sands are losing money, contributing to the loss of about 35,000 energy industry jobs across the province. Yet Alberta Highway 63, the major artery connecting Northern Alberta’s oil sands with the rest of the country, still buzzes with traffic. Tractor-trailers hauling loads that resemble rolling petrochemical plants parade past fleets of buses used to shuttle workers. Most vehicles carry “buggy whips” — bright orange pennants attached to tall spring-loaded wands — to help prevent them from being run over by the 1.6-million-pound dump trucks used in the oil sands mines. Despite a severe economic downturn in a region whose growth once seemed limitless, many energy companies have too much invested in the oil sands to slow down or turn off the taps. In addition to the continued operation of existing plants, construction persists on projects that began before the price fell, largely because billions of dollars have already been spent on them. Oil sands projects are based on 40-year investment time frames, so their owners are being forced to wait out slumps.

The world economic order is collapsing and this time there seems no way out - (www.theguardian.com) Europe has seen nothing like this for 70 years – the visible expression of a world where order is collapsing. The millions of refugees fleeing from ceaseless Middle Eastern war and barbarism are voting with their feet, despairing of their futures. The catalyst for their despair – the shredding of state structures and grip of Islamic fundamentalism on young Muslim minds – shows no sign of disappearing. Yet there is a parallel collapse in the economic order that is less conspicuous: the hundreds of billions of dollars fleeing emerging economies, from Brazil to China, don’t come with images of women and children on capsizing boats. Nor do banks that have lent trillions that will never be repaid post gruesome videos. However, this collapse threatens our liberal universe as much as certain responses to the refugees. Capital flight and bank fragility are profound dysfunctions in the way the global economy is now organised that will surface as real-world economic dislocation.

Fed officials seem ready to deploy negative rates in next crisis - (www.marketwatch.com)  Federal Reserve officials now seem open to deploying negative interest rates to combat the next serious recession even though they rejected that option during the darkest days of the financial crisis in 2009 and 2010. “Some of the experiences [in Europe] suggest maybe can we use negative interest rates and the costs aren’t as great as you anticipate,” said William Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, in an interview on CNBC on Friday. The Fed under former chairman Ben Bernanke considered using negative rates during the financial crisis, but rejected the idea. “We decided — even during the period where the economy was doing the poorest and we were pretty far from our objectives — not to move to negative interest rates because of some concern that the costs might outweigh the benefits,” said Dudley.

Investment firm Fortress to shutter its macro hedge fund - (www.reuters.com) Oct 12 Fortress Investment Group is planning to close its global macro hedge fund after suffering heavy losses and Michael Novogratz, the fund's portfolio manager, is expected to leave the hedge fund and private equity company, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday. The news comes just three months after Fortress reshuffled the senior ranks at its macro fund, making Novogratz, 50, the sole chief investment officer. The Fortress fund is the latest in a series of macro hedge funds - which bet on interest rates, currencies, commodities, fixed income and stocks - to shut down lately. Bain Capital and Armored Wolf also announced last week that they would be returning outside capital. Fortress' stock price fell 5.3 percent to $5.15 in after-hours trading on the news.

If You're Young, The Job Outlook Is Grim No Matter Where You Live - (www.bloomberg.com) The World Bank has an unsettling message for young people around the globe: Whether you're male or female, live in Tunisia or the U.S., you will struggle to find a job. Across regions and continents, people 15 to 29 years old are at least twice as likely as adults to be unemployed. The world will have to create 600 million jobs over the next 10 years, or 5 million a month, just to prevent the situation from getting worse, the Washington-based lender said in a report it released Tuesday with coalition partners such as the International Labor Organization. The youngest workers have been hit hardest by the financial crisis and the global recession of the last decade because they often held the temporary jobs, which offer less protection. The youth unemployment rate is projected to be 13.1 percent in 2015, compared with 4.5 percent for adults, according to the ILO.



Sunday, October 25, 2015

Monday October 26 Housing and Economic stories


Renewable Energy Financing Hits a Snag - (www.nytimes.com) Only a few months ago, it seemed that the renewable energy sector could do little wrong: Stock prices were soaring and money was pouring in as investors flocked to get in on the action. That is no longer the case. Low oil and gas prices have roiled the energy markets, and the specter of rising interest rates has rattled investors’ confidence in the industry’s returns. Although energy and financial experts say that the basics of the business remain sound, the lofty stock prices have tumbled, leading renewable energy companies to scramble for new approaches to their businesses. Nowhere has the retrenchment been more acute than in a newfangled financing mechanism called a yieldco. Yieldcos, public companies conceived by renewable energy companies as a way to raise cheaper capital for project development, have attracted billions in new investments. The yieldcos buy and operate power plants, mainly those that their parent companies develop. The yieldcos then collect the contracted electricity fees and pay the bulk of them out as dividends. With investors hungry for stable returns, energy yieldcos were greeted with enthusiasm through initial public offerings of their stocks over the last year and a half.

Bond predators humbled by distressed bets - (www.ft.com) The cleverest predators of the bond market have suffered a humbling this year, after a heap of high profile bets have gone awry. So-called distressed debt funds seek lucrative opportunities in parts of the credit market where many other investors fear to tread, snapping up the bonds or loans of borrowers either nearing or who have filed for bankruptcy. Sometimes, the bet is that a company only needs more time and money to get on an even keel or the distressed debt fund steps in and takes it over in a restructuring. Usually, it is simply that the price of a company’s debts have been pushed below their fair value — based on the expected recovery value of assets — by panicky traditional investors, who flee at the slightest whiff of danger. This somewhat dangerous way to make money is the domain of some of the most respected money managers in the finance industry. But an unhappy confluence of market-wide challenges and idiosyncratic issues has proven exceptionally painful this year. “It’s been humbling for most folks,” says Edwin Tai, a distressed debt portfolio manager at Newfleet Asset Management. “Seven years of easy money has made even the most disciplined investors stretch a little.”

Market turmoil taking toll on once-invincible IPO market - (www.cnbc.com) The IPO market is painting a cold-blooded picture of the toll this summer's market turmoil has taken on innovation and growth: The number of IPOs this year could drop by as many as 20 below what was expected as recently as last month. The market is likely to see as few as 180 initial public offerings in the U.S. by the end of the year, down from an estimate of 200 in September and 275 deals last year, said Kathleen Smith, president of Renaissance Capital, a research and investment firm focused on IPOs. If the pace holds, it would represent a 35 percent decline from last year's deal flow. The toll has been even tougher for technology companies: Only 17 tech companies have gone public this year, Renaissance analyst Nick Einhorn said. Digicel, the cellphone provider serving the Caribbean, withdrew its IPO last week, one of 65 deals canceled this year. That's the most since 2012.

China Sausage Maker Says May Miss Bond Payment as Defaults Mount - (www.bloomberg.com) A Chinese sausage maker said it’s not sure if it can repay a bond after its director was put under house arrest, the latest case in China mixing corporate governance and debt problems. Based in the eastern province of Jiangsu, Nanjing Yurun Foods Co. is suffering cash shortages and great risks in its finances and operations, it said in a statement posted on the Chinamoney website. The company, which sold 1.3 billion yuan ($206 million) ofbonds at a yield of 5.49 percent in 2012, must repay 1.37 billion yuan in principal and interest due Oct. 18, according to the statement. As that’s a Sunday, the effective due date is the following day, it says. Investors are growing alarmed as slowing economic growth and a fight against corruption compound strains in China’s 42.2 trillion yuan bond market. There have been four defaults this year, including one by China National Erzhong Group Co., according to China International Capital Corp. Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. became the first Chinese developer to renege on a debt obligation in the offshore bond market in April after founder Kwok Ying Shing resigned amid a corruption probe.

Petrobras Isn't Only State-Run Company Unloved by Bond Traders - (www.bloomberg.com) State-run companies are realizing government backing isn’t what it used to be. Tumbling commodities, a corruption scandal ensnaring Petroleo Brasileiro SA and slowing global growth are sapping demand for so-called quasi-sovereign debt across emerging markets, with state-backed companies in Brazil, South Africa, Colombia and Mexico faring the worst. Investors were demanding 1.09 percentage points more than sovereign debt to own the bonds of 200 state-run issuers this month, up from 0.63 percent in December, according to Barclays Plc, whose indexes include $556 billion in quasi-sovereigns. The debt from state-backed oil producers, utilities and banks across emerging markets have been among the hardest hit securities in the recent global selloff of higher-yielding securities. It’s a dramatic shift for many of the bonds, which are seen as less risky than those from similar companies without state sponsorship because of an implicit government guarantee. Faced with mounting losses, investors have started to question how firm the sovereign support really is, according to Bank of Nova Scotia.