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We are about to learn once again that lack of resilience is the flip side of efficiency. The world’s seventh largest shipping firm, Korean-based Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd., failed to rally the support of its creditors last week and was forced to file for bankruptcy.

Retailers and manufacturers worldwide are in a bit of a panic as the fate of goods on Hanjin ships shifts into the hands of courts and lawyers for creditors intent on seizing Hanjin assets in order to ensure payment of outstanding bills. Much of Hanjin’s fleet is chartered, that is, owned by others, and those owners want to make sure they get paid their charter fees or get their ships back pronto.

The result has been that half of Hanjin’s container vessels are currently blocked from the world’s ports for fear that the ports will not be paid for their loading and unloading services. Other shippers which include trucking companies which carry containers to their final destination are reluctant to take on Hanjin freight for fear of not getting paid. (You are perhaps seeing the main theme here.) Meanwhile, the sudden drop in available shipping containers and ships has caused shipping rates to soar as businesses scramble to make other arrangements for items still to be shipped.

U.S. retailers are so panicked that they have asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to step in to help resolve the breakdown which is likely to hurt those retailers during the upcoming Christmas shopping season.

Let’s take a step back to understand how this all happened. Clever business owners have learned to run so-called “lean” operations to compete with their equally lean competitors. One way to be lean is to reduce idle inventories which just sit in expensive warehouses by arranging to have what the business needs delivered practically every day.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Great Debt Unwind Beneath the Surface: US Commercial Bankruptcies Soar

September 10, 2016

The Great Debt Unwind Beneath the Surface: US Commercial Bankruptcies Soar

They’d believed in six years of Wall Street hogwash.

Not that you would have guessed from the stock market, hovering at all-time highs, or from soaring junk bonds, even the riskiest paper: CCC-and-below rated junk bonds skyrocketed since their February 12 low as their average yield plunged from 21.6% to 13.5%. Even the S&P US Distressed High Yield Corporate Bond index has soared 57% since February 12.

Those are miracles to behold.

At the slightest squiggles of the market, the Fed goes into bouts of by now embarrassing flip-flopping on rate increases that demonstrate to the world that they have absolutely nothing else in mind than keeping the stock market inflated and keeping the biggest credit bubble in US history from unceremoniously imploding.

And the ECB is out there with its scorched-earth monetary policies, with negative interest rates and bond purchases, including asset backed securities and corporate bonds, that it has been caught buying directly from issuers. It’s driving even corporate bond yields into the negative. Just now, French drugmaker Sanofi and German household products maker Henkel issued bonds with negative yields, thus getting paid by these hapless investors to borrow.

The idea for bondholders being that you have practically no income throughout and get “most” of your money back at maturity. An idea that is sending NIRP refugees into US assets, driving up their values and pushing down their yields. It all works wonderfully.

But beneath this magic is the real US economy, and there, despite this flood of money and the low interest rates and the soaring stocks, and all the shenanigans to keep the credit bubble from imploding, business bankruptcies are soaring.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global Supply Chains Paralyzed After World’s 7th Largest Container Shipper Files Bankruptcy, Assets Frozen

August 31, 2016

Global Supply Chains Paralyzed After World’s 7th Largest Container Shipper Files Bankruptcy, Assets Frozen

After years of relentless decline in the Baltic Dry index…

… today the largest casualty finally emerged on Wednesday when South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping, the country’s largest shipping firm and the world’s seventh-biggest container carrier, filed for court receivership after losing the support of its banks, leaving its assets frozen as ports from China to Spain denied access to its vessels.

For those unfamiliar with the company, here is a brief overview from its website:

Hanjin Shipping is Korea’s largest and one of the world’s top ten container carriers that operates some 70 liner and tramper services around the globe transporting over 100 million tons of cargo annually. Its fleet consists of some 150 containerships and bulk carriers.

With 4 regional headquarters in the U.S., Europe, Asia and South East & West Asia, approximately 5,000 global staffs as well as container terminals in world’s major ports contribute to Hanjin Shipping’s world-class logistics network around the world.

As Reuters reports, banks led by state-run Korea Development Bank withdrew backing for the world’s seventh-largest container carrier on Tuesday, saying a funding plan by its parent group was inadequate to tackle debt that stood at 5.6 trillion won ($5 billion) at the end of 2015.

Suk Tai-soo, president and chief executive officer of Hanjin Shipping Co, arrives
at a court in Seoul, South Korea, August 31, 2016.

South Korea’s biggest shipping firm, announced the filing for receivership and a request to the court to freeze its assets, which the Seoul Central District Court planned to grant, a judge told Reuters.

As part of the company’s insolvency process, the court will now decide whether Hanjin Shipping should remain as a going concern or be dissolved, a process that usually takes one or two months but is expected to be accelerated in Hanjin’s case, the judge said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chinese Bankruptcies Surge More Than 50% In Q1; Worse To Come

June 24, 2016

Chinese Bankruptcies Surge More Than 50% In Q1; Worse To Come

Two months ago, when looking at the soaring number of bond issuance cancellations and postponements as calculated by BofA, we commented that it was only a matter of time before the long overdue tide of corporate defaults, held by for so many years by the Chinese government which would do anything to delay the inevitable, was about to be unleashed.

This prediction has indeed been validated and as the FT reports overnight, Chinese bankruptcies have surged this year “as the government uses the legal system to deal with “zombie” companies and reduce industrial overcapacity as part of a broader effort to restructure the economy.” In just the first quarter of 2016, Chinese courts have accepted 1,028 bankruptcy cases, up a whopping 52.5% from a year earlier, according to the Supreme People’s Court. Just under 20,000 cases were accepted in total between 2008 and 2015.

This is surprising because while China’s legislature had approved a modern bankruptcy law in 2007 it had barely been used for years, with debt disputes often handled through backroom negotiations involving local governments. “Bankruptcy isn’t just about creditor-borrower relations. It also touches on social issues like unemployment,” said Wang Xinxin, director of the bankruptcy research centre at Renmin University law school in Beijing. “For a long time many local courts weren’t willing to accept them, or local governments didn’t let them accept.”

However, following the dramatic collapse of global commodity prices, which as we showed last October meant that more than half of local companies could not afford to even make one coupon payment with cash from operations, Beijing had no choice but to throw in the towel. And as the FT adds, “bankruptcy courts have been recruited into China’s drive for “supply-side reform”, which centres on reduction of overcapacity in sectors such as steel, coal and cement.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Commercial Bankruptcies Skyrocket

May 6, 2016

US Commercial Bankruptcies Skyrocket

The “credit cycle” begins to unravel.

One of the big indicators of the end of the “credit cycle” is the number of bankruptcies. During good times, so earlier in the credit cycle, companies borrow money. Then, overconfident and lured by low interest rates and overoptimistic rosy-scenario rhetoric emanating from all sides, they do what the Fed and Wall-Street firms want them to do: they borrow even more money. Then reality sets in, and they buckle under this pile of debt.

The bankruptcy filings of Ultra Petroleum and Midstates Petroleum on Friday and Saturday brought oil & gas bankruptcies of companies rated by Fitch and other ratings agencies to 59. These two companies piled $3.1 billion in defaulted junk bonds and another $1.5 billion in defaulted loans on top of the growing mountain of defaulted oil & gas debt.

With these two bankruptcies, Fitch Ratings raised its high-yield energy default rate to an all-time record of 13% and now projects that by the end of 2016, this default rate will jump to an even more glorious record of 20%.

But it’s not just oil and gas. And it’s not just companies whose bonds and loans are traded and are rated by Fitch and other ratings agencies. These are the larger outfits – big enough to have bondholders and big enough for the financial media to report.

But bankruptcies of all kinds and sizes and in a wide variety of sectors are now soaring.

Total US commercial bankruptcy filings in April rose 3% from March and soared 32% from a year ago, to 3,482, the American Bankruptcy Institute just reported. It was the sixth month in a row of year-over-year increases.

Of these commercial bankruptcies in April, 680 were Chapter 11 filings, up 67% year-over-year! The rest were liquidations. And the pace is quickening: In just one month, from 450 in March, Chapter 11 filings have skyrocketed 51%!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Could Be Witnessing the Death of the Fossil Fuel Industry—Will It Take the Rest of the Economy Down With It?

April 22, 2016

We Could Be Witnessing the Death of the Fossil Fuel Industry—Will It Take the Rest of the Economy Down With It?

In just two decades, the total value of the energy being produced via fossil fuel extraction has plummeted by more than half. Now $3 trillion of debt is at risk.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

It’s not looking good for the global fossil fuel industry. Although the world remains heavily dependent on oil, coal and natural gas—which today supply around 80 percent of our primary energy needs—the industry is rapidly crumbling.

This is not merely a temporary blip, but a symptom of a deeper, long-term process related to global capitalism’s escalating overconsumption of planetary resources and raw materials.

New scientific research shows that the growing crisis of profitability facing fossil fuel industries is part of an inevitable period of transition to a post-carbon era.

But ongoing denialism has led powerful vested interests to continue clinging blindly to their faith in fossil fuels, with increasingly devastating and unpredictable consequences for the environment.

Bankruptcy epidemic

In February, the financial services firm Deloitte predicted that over 35 percent of independent oil companies worldwide are likely to declare bankruptcy, potentially followed by a further 30 percent next year—a total of 65 percent of oil firms around the world. Since early last year, already 50 North American oil and gas producers have filed bankruptcy.

The cause of the crisis is the dramatic drop in oil prices—down by two-thirds since 2014—which are so low that oil companies are finding it difficult to generate enough revenue to cover the high costs of production, while also repaying their loans.

Oil and gas companies most at risk are those with the largest debt burden. And that burden is huge—as much as $2.5 trillion, according to The Economist. The real figure is probably higher.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Are Bankrupt Oil Companies Still Pumping?

April 21, 2016

Why Are Bankrupt Oil Companies Still Pumping?

As oil prices have declined, the number of bankruptcies and distressed oil majors has quickly risen into the dozens. In fact, a recent Reuters analysis suggests little effect on production from when companies enter bankruptcy. Reuters cited Magnum Hunter as a primary example of this reality.

While Magnum Hunter filed for bankruptcy in December 2014, the firm has scrambled even in Chapter 11 to keep its oil flowing, resulting in O&G production rising by roughly one-third between mid-2014 and late 2015. The firm has used the protection bankruptcy courts to help stave off creditors while keeping the pumps flowing full tilt. Nearly all of Magnum Hunter’s 3000 wells are still producing crude, and that makes sense for several reasons.

First, daily costs for operating wells remain well below current spot prices. While drilling new wells is not economical, it is perfectly logical to keep exploiting existing wells. Fracked wells usually start to see a significant decline in production after about two years of operations. So eventually Magnum Hunter and other companies will see their production fall, but two years can be a very long time to pump.

Second, creditors want to extract maximum value from the company and the best way to do that in the current environment is to keep the oil flowing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Corporations Are Defaulting On Their Debts Like It’s 2008 All Over Again

April 19, 2016

Corporations Are Defaulting On Their Debts Like It’s 2008 All Over Again

The Dow closed above 18,000 on Monday for the first time since July. Isn’t that great news? I truly wish that it was. If the Dow actually reflected economic reality, I could stop writing about “economic collapse” and start blogging about cats or football. Unfortunately, the stock market and the economy are moving in two completely different directions right now. Even as stock prices soar, big corporations are defaulting on their debts at a level that we have not seen since the last financial crisis. In fact, this wave of debt defaults have become so dramatic that even USA Today is reporting on it…

Get ready to step over some landmines, investors. The number of companies defaulting on their debt is hitting levels not seen since the financial crisis, and it’s not just a problem for bondholders.

So far this year, 46 companies have defaulted on their debt, the highest level since 2009, according to S&P Ratings Services. Five companies defaulted this week, based on the latest data available from S&P Ratings Services. That includes New Jersey-based specialty chemical company Vertellus Specialties and Ohio-based iron ore producer Cliffs Natural. Of the world’s defaults this year, 37 are of companies based in the U.S.

Meanwhile, coal producer Peabody Energy (BTU) and surfwear seller Pacific Sunwear (PSUN) this week filed plans for bankruptcy protection. Shares of Peabody have dropped 97% over the past year to $2 a share and Pacific Sunwear stock is off 98% to 4 cents a share.

A lot of big companies in this country have fallen on hard times, and it looks like bankruptcy attorneys are going to be absolutely swamped with work for the foreseeable future.

So why are stock prices soaring right now? After all, it doesn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

$3 Trillion Black Hole Could Destroy Economy: “True Extent of Pension Problem Has Been Obscured”

April 12, 2016

$3 Trillion Black Hole Could Destroy Economy: “True Extent of Pension Problem Has Been Obscured”

Yet another reason why taxes are going up, cities and states are going broke, and the world is approaching financial implosion…

As if the world needed another dangerous and volatile factor in the mix of looming economic downturn.

Unfunded liabilities for pensions have been a problem for a while now, but as investors continue to face fleeting returns, many states and cities are facing the music… and when it stops, there won’t be enough money to go around.

Someone will lose their savings, their standard of living, their retirement and maybe their future. Others will be taxed to death to clean up the mess of the many places were the system is cracked, fissured and falling apart.

According to FT:

The US public pension system has developed a $3.4tn funding hole that will pile pressure on cities and states to cut spending or raise taxes to avoid Detroit-style bankruptcies.

[…] the collective funding shortfall of US public pension funds is three times larger than official figures showed, and is getting bigger.

Devin Nunes, a US Republican congressman, said: “It has been clear for years that many cities and states are critically underfunding their pension programmes and hiding the fiscal holes with accounting tricks.”

Mr Nunes… added: “When these pension funds go insolvent, they will create problems so disastrous that the fund officials assume the federal government will have to bail them out.”

Large pension shortfalls have already played a role in driving several US cities, including Detroit in Michigan and San Bernardino in California, to file for bankruptcy. The fear is other cities will soon become insolvent due to the size of their pension deficits.

The inevitable result is, of course, tax increases and spending cuts – potentially on important and vital services.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Illinois on the Brink of Bankruptcy

April 4, 2016

Illinois on the Brink of Bankruptcy

The pension crisis is brewing and the one state that appears to be heading toward a complete bankruptcy is Illinois. Clients should not own ANY debt from Illinois, be it city, municipal, or state. Just get out before the curtain falls. The Illinois Constitution plainly states that pension benefits, once granted, “shall not be diminished or impaired.” Thus, taxpayers are absolutely screwed and this is not a place you want to own property. Governments cannot negotiate to reduce pensions so state workers will be pitted against taxpayers. The Supreme Court has struck down any attempt to reduce liabilities based upon this clause in the Illinois Constitution.

Impatient Banks: A Real Red Flag For The Oil Patch

March 31, 2016

Impatient Banks: A Real Red Flag For The Oil Patch

Lenders to the oil and gas industry have been extraordinarily lenient amid the worst downturn in decades, allowing indebted companies to survive a little while longer in hopes of a rebound in oil prices. But the screws are set to tighten just a bit more as the periodic credit redetermination period finishes up.

Banks reassess their credit lines to oil and gas firms twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. While the lending arrangements vary from bank to bank and from borrower to borrower, lenders largely punted on both redetermination periods last year, providing a grace period for drillers to wait out the bust in prices. But oil prices have not rebounded much since the original crash in late 2014.

Time could run out for companies that have been hanging on by a thread.

Debt was not seen as a big problem in the past, as triple-digit oil prices had both lenders and borrowers eager to see drilling accelerate and spread to new frontiers. Indeed, debt rose even when oil prices exceeded $100 per barrel. According to The Wall Street Journal, the net debt of publically-listed global oil and gas companies grew threefold over the past decade, hitting a high of $549 billion last year. In fact, debt accumulated in the sector at a faster rate between 2012 and 2015 – a period when oil prices were exceptionally high – than in previous years.

With oil prices down more than 60 percent from the 2014 peak, piling on ever more debt to a loss-making operation looks increasingly untenable. Distressed energy loans – loans in danger of default – account for more than half of the energy portfolio at several major banks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Court Decision Could Accelerate Oil And Gas Bankruptcies

March 12, 2016

Court Decision Could Accelerate Oil And Gas Bankruptcies

Oil and gas data experts Evaluate Energy showed yesterday that U.S. E&Ps took a huge hit in 2015. With the value of total proved reserves in the sector declining by an astounding $515 billion dollars.

The chart below shows just how great the damage is, compared to reserves valuations the last few years.

Factors like that have caused an increasing number of high-profile E&Ps to file for bankruptcy in America. And a critical court decision this week could mean even more coming.

That ruling came Tuesday in the bankruptcy proceedings of Sabine Oil & Gas, detailed by Energy Law360. Where a New York judge ruled that bankruptcy allows Sabine to cancel contracts it holds with midstream firms on the company’s petroleum licenses in Texas.

Here’s why this is a sea change for oil and gas law.

Sabine held three separate contracts with pipeline firms in Texas, for the transport and sale of oil and gas that the company produced. These contracts came with clauses like “deliver or pay” features — where Sabine was obligated to send minimum volumes of production through the pipeline, or pay financial penalties to the pipeline operators.

Such contracts could have been a stumbling block in bankruptcy — requiring the company to deliver production or cash at a time when its operations have slowed or stopped. And so Sabine had challenged in bankruptcy court to have the agreements nixed.

And the judge in the case agreed. Ruling that the midstream contracts are not “running with the land” — in essence, saying that the contracts are not inextricably tied to the land assets that underlie Sabine.

The decision opens the door for Sabine to sever the contracts as it restructures in bankruptcy. A strategy that other E&Ps immediately jumped on — with bankrupt producer Magnum Hunter Resources yesterday striking a deal to cancel four midstream contracts as it restructures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Moody’s Warns of 30% Rise in Commodity Based Company Bankruptcies in 2016

March 2, 2016

Moody’s Warns of 30% Rise in Commodity Based Company Bankruptcies in 2016

The commodity industry is bracing for a high year of bankruptcy and default filings that will impact mining and metals along with oil and gas. Moody’s has also warned of global speculative-grade corporate defaults that will increase by more than 30% in 2016, reaching the highest level since 2009. Those interested in mining shares should pay close attention to what they are buying. Until gold crosses that key resistance, we still have only a typical three-month reaction. A rally must extend beyond March to be impressive.

Chesapeake’s AIG Moment: Energy Giant Faces $1 Billion In Collateral Calls

February 26, 2016

Chesapeake’s AIG Moment: Energy Giant Faces $1 Billion In Collateral Calls

Back on February 10, when looking at Carl Icahn’s darling Chesapeake, whose stock had plunged to effectively record lows on imminent bankruptcy concerns, we said that for anyone brave enough to take the plunge, the “Trade of the Year” would be to go long a specific bond, the $500 million in 3.25s of March 2016 which were maturing in just over a month, and which on February 10 were yielding 300% at a price of 80.5 cents on the dollar.

And then, just two days later, in an unexpected turn, Chesapeake announced that contrary to public opinion, the troubled energy giant “is planning to pay $500 million of debt maturing in March, using a combination of cash on hand and other liquidity that may include its credit line, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.” The issue referenced was precisely the bond that was our “trade of the year.”

To be sure, the bond promptly surged, even as the stock priced tumbled, on what was seen as a very bondholder-friendly action (and thus to the detriment of shareholders) and hit a price of 95 cents while the stock tumbled by 15%, generating a 30% return for anyone who had decided to go along. At that moment we urged anyone in the trade to take their profits and go home, taking a few weeks, or the rest of 2016, off.

A quick update since then shows that those same bonds are currently trading effectively at par (99.25 cents)…

… suggesting that the risk of a near-term Chesapeake bankruptcy may be gone for now.

But is it truly off the table?

Sadly, we think that despite the brief hiccup in optimism, CHK’s troubles are about to get worse, even if this particular bond is ultimately repaid, for one simple reason: in its 10-K filed yesterday, Chesapeake announced that it has just reached its own “AIG moment.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sudden Death? Junk-Rated Companies Headed for Biggest “Refinancing Cliff” Ever: Moody’s

February 17, 2016

Sudden Death? Junk-Rated Companies Headed for Biggest “Refinancing Cliff” Ever: Moody’s

At the worst possible time.

Most of the defaults, debt restructurings, and bankruptcies so far this year and last year were triggered when over-indebted cash-flow negative companies could not make interest payments on their debts.

During the crazy days of the peak of the credit bubble two years ago, they would have been able to borrow even more money at 8% or 9% and go on as if nothing happened. But those days are gone. Now the riskiest companies face interest costs of 20% or higher – if they’re able to get new money at all. Hence, the wave of debt restructurings and bankruptcies.

But that’s small fry. Now comes the wave of companies whose debts mature. They will have to borrow new money not only to fund their interest payments, cash-flow-negative operations, and capital expenditures, but also to pay off maturing debt.

That “refinancing cliff” is going to be the biggest, steepest ever, after the greatest credit bubble in US history when companies took on record amounts of debt, and it comes at the worst possible time, warned Moody’s in its annual report.

In its report a year ago, Moody’s had already warned that the refinancing cliff for junk-rated US companies over the next five years – at the time, from 2015 through 2019 – would hit $791 billion. Of that, $349 billion would mature in 2019, the largest amount ever to mature in a single year.

But Moody’s pointed out that “near term risk remains low as only $18 billion, or 2% of total speculative-grade issuance comes due in 2015.” And that’s how it played out last year.

Since then, the refinancing cliff has gotten a lot bigger, according to Moody’s new annual report. The amount in junk-rated debt to be refinanced over the next five years, from 2016 through 2020, has surged nearly 20% to a record of $947 billion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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