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Hartford Could Default On Its Debt As Soon As Next Month, Moody’s Says

October 19, 2017

Hartford Could Default On Its Debt As Soon As Next Month, Moody’s Says

Moody’s latest warning about Hartford Connecticut is its most dire yet.

In a report issued Thursday, the ratings agency’s analysts said Hartford, Connecticut’s once-proud capital city, could default on its debt as soon as next month, forcing the capital of the country’s wealthiest state (on a per capita basis) into bankruptcy.

If the city doesn’t change course (and given its shrinking tax base and the departure last year of Aetna, a major insurance company that was founded in Hartford and had located its headquarters in the city for more than 150 years, reforms appear unlikely), receive a state bailout or strike some kind of deal with its creditors, Moody’s says lenders can expect it to run up annual deficits in excess of $60 million through the next 20 years.

Moody’s (along with its rivals Fitch and Standard & Poor’s) downgraded Hartford’s credit rating on Sept. 26 to Caa3 from Caa1, reflecting a view that creditors would only manage to recoup between 60% and 80% of their principal should Hartford default.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that the state government will be there to support troubled Hartford. Four months into the fiscal year, Connecticut is the only state in the country that hasn’t passed a budget as lawmakers the state’s lame-duck Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy joust over how to close a $3.5 billion two-year budget deficit. In a reflection of the state’s broader fiscal crisis (as is the case in many US states), Moody’s says Hartford’s public employee unions represent a “significant constraint” to cutting the city’s deficit, as the Hartford Courant points out.

Moody’s called Hartford’s unions “a constraint” to trimming the city’s deficit. “Contractual salary increases and employee benefits are significant contributors to the city’s long term structural imbalance,” the report read. Unions would have to make “significant concessions” for Hartford to narrow those deficits, it said.

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

De-dollarization Not Now

October 11, 2017

De-dollarization Not Now

USD-denominated debt outside the US hits record – even junk bonds.

China announced today that it would sell $2 billion in government bonds denominated in US dollars. The offering will be China’s largest dollar-bond sale ever. The last time China sold dollar-bonds was in 2004.

Investors around the globe are eager to hand China their US dollars, in exchange for a somewhat higher yield. The 10-year US Treasury yield is currently 2.34%. The 10-year yield on similar Chinese sovereign debt is 3.67%.

Credit downgrade, no problem. In September, Standard & Poor’s downgraded China’s debt (to A+) for the first time in 19 years, on worries that the borrowing binge in China will continue, and that this growing mountain of debt will make it harder for China to handle a financial shock, such as a banking crisis.

Moody’s had already downgraded China in May (to A1) for the first time in 30 years. “The downgrade reflects Moody’s expectation that China’s financial strength will erode somewhat over the coming years, with economy-wide debt continuing to rise as potential growth slows,” it said.

These downgrades put Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s on the same page with Fitch, which had downgraded China in 2013.

But the Chinese Government doesn’t exactly need dollars. On October 9th, it reported that foreign exchange reserves – including $1.15 trillion in US Treasuries, according the US Treasury Department – rose to $3.11 trillion at the end of September, an 11-month high, as its crackdown on capital flight is bearing fruit (via Trading Economics):

So why does China want these $2 billion in US dollars? For one, they’re still cheap, given the low yield, which is expected to rise as the Fed has started to unwind QE. And two, China might be interested in creating a benchmark for dollar-bond trading in China that could help set prices for Chinese corporate debt denominated in dollars. And there’s a lot of it.

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

S&P Just Downgraded 10 Of The Biggest US Energy Companies

February 2, 2016

S&P Just Downgraded 10 Of The Biggest US Energy Companies

Just 10 days after “Moody’s Put Over Half A Trillion Dollars In Energy Debt On Downgrade Review“, moments ago S&P decided it wanted to be first out of the gate with a wholesale downgarde of the US energy companies, and announced that it was taking rating actions on 20 investment-grade companies, including 10 downgrades.

The full release is below:

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said today that it has taken rating actions on 20 investment-grade U.S. oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) companies after completing a review. The review followed the recent revision of our hydrocarbon price assumptions (see “S&P Lowers its Hydrocarbon Price Assumptions On Market Oversupply; Recovery Price Deck Assumptions Also Lowered,” published Jan. 12, 2016).

While oil prices deteriorated over the past 15 months, the U.S.-based investment-grade companies we rate had been largely immune to downgrades. However, given the magnitude of the recent reductions in our price deck, most of the investment-grade companies were affected during this review. We expect that many of these companies will continue to lower capital spending and focus on efficiencies and drilling core properties. However, these actions, for the most part, are insufficient to stem the meaningful deterioration expected in
credit measures over the next few years.

A list of rating actions on the affected companies follows.

DOWNGRADES

Chevron Corp. Corporate Credit Rating Lowered To AA-/Stable/A-1+ From AA/Negative/A-1+ 

The downgrade reflects our expectation that in the context of lower oil and  gas prices and refining margins, the company’s credit measures will be below our expectations for the ‘AA’ rating over the next two years. We anticipate Chevron will significantly outspend internally generated cash flow to fund major project capital spending and dividends this year and generate little cash available for debt reduction over the following two years.

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

Peak Desperation

October 14, 2015

Peak Desperation

When Standard and Poor’s downgraded Dell to junk in September 2013, it cited the slump in the PC business, the pricing pressures in the sector, and the proposed buyout of the company by founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Management. They’d heap new debt on the company whose sales at the time had dropped 8% from a year earlier, and whose net profit had plunged 32%. But at least it still had a profit.

Today the PC industry is still in trouble. HP has been laying off people in big mega-waves, so have Microsoft, Intel, and others.

But OK, instead of investing in cutting-edge products and services that could move the company forward, it’s the perfect time for Dell and its investors to embark on the largest tech deal ever, a masterpiece of financial engineering, the $67 billion buyout of data-storage company EMC.

Standard and Poor’s, which affirmed Dell’s current junk rating of BB+ but put EMC on CreditWatch negative, figured that the deal would be funded through a mix of debt issuance, including perhaps $40 billion in leveraged loans, equity from current owners and the Singaporean wealth fund Temasek, some cash on hand, and the issuance of a flimsy tracking stock – similar to issuing old bicycles – to track VMware’s stock price. Details have not been disclosed.

Wall Street loves it. A whole slew of financial advisors are in on the deal, on both sides. The $40 billion in leveraged loans alone could rake in $500 million in fees, Business Insider reported. Total advisory and financing fees could exceed $700 million. Ka-ching.

And what multiple is Dell paying for EMC? Back in 2013, Michael Dell and his compadres were paying 5 times Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) for Dell.

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

S&P Downgrades Japan From AA- To A+ On Doubts Abenomics Will Work – Full Text

September 16, 2015

S&P Downgrades Japan From AA- To A+ On Doubts Abenomics Will Work – Full Text

Who would have thought that decades of ZIRP, an aborted attempt to hike rates over a decade ago, and the annual monetization of well over 10% of sovereign debt would lead to a toxic debt spiral, regardless of how many “Abenomics” arrows one throws at it? Apparently Standard and Poors just had its a-ha subprime flashbulb moment and moments ago, a little over 4 years after it downgraded the US from its legendary AAA-rating which led to angry phone calls from Tim Geithner and a painful US government lawsuit, downgraded Japan from AA- to A+.  The reason: rising doubt Abenomics is working.

Apparently S&P has never heard of the Magic Money Tree theory concocted by economists who have never traded an asset in their lives, in which “countries that print their own currency” have nothing to fear about a 250% debt/GDP ratio. In fact, the only fear is that it is not big enough.

Expect the market’s reaction to be that since Abenomics has not worked yet, some nearly three years after it was launched then Japan will be forced to do even more of it, simply because it has no choice – it is now all in, the problem of course being that the BOJ is simply running out of stuff to monetize as even the IMF warned two weeks ago…

Here is the S&P’s full downgrade.

Japan Ratings Lowered To ‘A+/A-1’; Outlook Is Stable

OVERVIEW

  • Economic support for Japan’s sovereign creditworthiness has continued to  weaken in the past three to four years. Despite showing initial promise,  the government’s strategy to revive economic growth and end deflation appears unlikely to reverse this deterioration in the next two to three  years.
  • We are lowering our sovereign credit ratings on Japan to ‘A+/A-1’ from  ‘AA-/A-1+’.
  • The outlook on the long-term rating is stable.

 

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

S.&P. Nears Settlement With Justice Over Inflated Ratings

January 13, 2015

S.&P. Nears Settlement With Justice Over Inflated Ratings

On television and in the courtroom, Standard & Poor’s has waged war against a Justice Department lawsuit. But behind the scenes, the giant bond-ratings agency wants nothing more than to buy peace.

After S.&P. mounted a two-year campaign to defeat civil fraud charges — portraying them as retaliation for cutting the credit rating of the United States — the ratings agency is now negotiating with the Justice Department to settle the case, according to people briefed on the matter.

For S.&P., which is accused of awarding inflated credit ratings to mortgage investments that spurred the financial crisis, the delay in settling may prove costly. The Justice Department and more than a dozen state attorneys general are demanding that S.&P. pay more than $1 billion to settle the case, the people briefed on the matter said, a penalty large enough to wipe out the rating agency’s entire operating profit for a year.

If S.&P. capitulates to the government’s financial demands — and it has privately signaled a willingness to do so, the people said — the settlement would support the conclusion that it is futile to fight government fines.

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

 

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