Uk Best Thing Ever, Says Market

[AvidFan]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ayGCM6r4MGLE&pos=3

Cameron Austerity Makes U.K. Debts World Beater: Credit Markets

By Bryan Keogh

Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- British companies are beating the world in the bond market as investors bet Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts to tame the budget deficit will preserve the U.K.’s top credit rating.

U.K. corporate debt denominated in all currencies returned 3.25 percent last month, the most in a year and the best among the 10 countries making up almost 90 percent of the $6.2 trillion Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Broad Market Corporate Index. Bonds of Banco Santander SA’s Abbey National unit and Tesco Plc, the nation’s largest supermarket chain, led the gains, returning as much as 12.7 percent.

Cameron’s coalition government is pushing cuts and austerity measures worth 30 billion pounds ($46 billion) a year to shrink the U.K.’s 11 percent deficit to 2.1 percent by 2015. Investors are speculating this will preserve Britain’s AAA credit rating without slowing the economy too much that it curbs the ability of companies to meet their debt payments.

“Investors are happy with the measures taken by Cameron,” said Christian Weber, a senior credit strategist at UniCredit SpA in Munich. “The perception has spread that it’s better to actually tackle budget deficits than just keep spending and spending and spending, because that limits your ability in the future to help your economy stabilize.”

The extra yield investors demand to hold U.K. corporate bonds instead of benchmark government securities narrowed 4 basis points to 237 basis points in August, or 2.37 percentage points, compared with an increase of 6 basis points for U.S. company debt, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s global index. Spreads widened an average 4 basis points across all countries in the index last month and were unchanged yesterday at 180 basis points. Yields averaged 3.558 percent.

Government Bonds

U.K. government bonds are also rallying. They returned 4.7 percent last month, second only to Denmark’s 4.75 percent, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Sovereign Broad Market Plus index.

Elsewhere in credit markets, the cost of protecting corporate bonds from default in the U.S. fell to the lowest level in more than two weeks after the government said jobless claims fell. Auto-parts supplier Continental AG sold Europe’s first high-yield bond in a month and Citigroup Inc. will hold a meeting next week with investors to discuss the financing for the acquisition of Tomkins Plc.

Credit-default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index, which investors use to hedge against losses on corporate debt or to speculate on creditworthiness, fell 1.4 basis points to a mid-price of 107.7 basis points as of 5 p.m. in New York, the lowest since Aug. 18, according to index administrator Markit Group Ltd.

August Payrolls

The measure fell after initial jobless claims declined by 6,000 to 472,000 in the week ended Aug. 28, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, Labor Department figures showed yesterday in Washington.

The August payrolls report today may show the economy lost 105,000 jobs, the third straight monthly decline, according to the Bloomberg survey median. The drop will reflect dismissals of temporary government workers who were hired for the census. Economists forecast the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent.

The Markit iTraxx Europe Index of 125 companies with investment-grade ratings decreased 1.5 basis points to 107, and the Markit iTraxx Crossover Index of credit-default swaps on 50 companies with mostly high-yield credit ratings dropped 5 basis points to 487, according to Markit prices at 10 a.m. in London.

Asia Bond Risk

The Markit iTraxx Asia index of 50 investment-grade borrowers outside Japan dropped 3 basis points to 124 basis points, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc prices show.

The indexes typically fall as investor confidence improves. Credit swaps pay the buyer face value if a borrower fails to meet its obligations, less the value of the defaulted debt. A basis point equals $1,000 annually on a contract protecting $10 million of debt.

Continental, Europe’s second-largest auto parts supplier, sold 1 billion-euros ($1.3 billion) of seven-year bonds. The debt from the Hannover, Germany-based company priced to yield 7.625 percent, compared with 8.75 percent on five-year securities it sold on July 9, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA and Telefonica SA also sold bonds, putting this week on track to be the highest for European debt issuance in a month, Bloomberg data show. Sales of corporate and covered bonds total 15 billion euros this week, the most since the period ended July 30 and up from 12.6 billion euros last week.

Tomkins Financing

Citigroup will hold a meeting Sept. 8 at 10 a.m. New York time for the Tomkins financing, said a person familiar with the transaction, who declined to be identified because the talks are private.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Onex Corp. have agreed to buy London-based Tomkins, a maker of auto parts and building materials, for 2.89 billion pounds, according to a July 27 statement. They will fund the acquisition with $3 billion of underwritten debt.

Leveraged loan prices rose for the second day to the highest since Aug. 23. The Standard & Poor’s/LSTA US Leveraged Loan 100 Index increased 0.09 cent to 89.51 cents on the dollar. Loans have returned 4.1 percent in 2010, based on the index, which tracks the 100 largest dollar-denominated first-lien leveraged loans.

Most-Traded Bonds

Bonds from Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co., the world’s biggest maker of jet engines, were the most actively traded U.S. corporate securities by dealers, with 87 trades of $1 million or more, Bloomberg data show. The most active in junk bonds was Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the U.S. partner in BP Plc’s damaged Gulf of Mexico well, with 78 trades.

Junk bonds and leveraged loans are rated below Baa3 by Moody’s Investors Service and lower than BBB- by S&P.

Bonds of Apache Corp. declined by the most since they were issued after an explosion aboard a Mariner Energy Inc. platform in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday.

Apache’s $1.5 billion of 5.1 percent debt due in 2040 declined 3 cents to 98.9 cents on the dollar, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The Houston-based energy company sold the bonds on Aug. 17 at 98.936 cents on the dollar, Bloomberg data show.

In emerging markets, the yield spread narrowed by 4 basis points to 281 basis points, according to index data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. The spread has decreased 15 basis points since Aug. 30.

Best Performers

French bonds were the second best-performing notes of the 10 countries after U.K. company debt gaining 2.46 percent, with Canadian securities third at 2.38 percent, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes. The global average was 2.14 percent. For the year, Britain’s company debt has handed investors 9.56 percent, overtaking U.S. corporate notes, which returned 9.55 percent.

Abbey National’s 167 million pounds of zero-coupon notes due 2038 were the best-performing U.K. corporate bonds in August, with a 12.7 percent return, while Cheshunt, England- based Tesco’s 287.5 million pounds of 5.2 percent notes due 2057 gained 10.5 percent, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. The 135 million pounds of zero-coupon bonds due in 2038 issued by Barclays Plc, the third-largest U.K. lender, were the third-best performers, returning 10.2 percent.

“The benefit of the doubt has been granted to U.K. companies for the time being” in terms of the economy, helping the bonds, said Lucette Yvernault, who helps oversee the equivalent of about 7 billion euros as a money manager at Schroders Investment Management Ltd. in London.

Austerity Measures

Austerity measures in the wake of Europe’s sovereign deficit crisis in April will weigh on economic growth and increase the risk of credit rating cuts for some nations, Moody’s said in its semi-annual European Sovereign Outlook on Aug. 23.

The U.K., along with Germany and France, is likely to keep its top rating, Moody’s said. S&P affirmed the U.K.’s AAA rating on July 12, saying planned budget cuts supported the top grade.

The U.K. will announce measures to slash most departments’ budgets by about 25 percent in October as it seeks to tackle a deficit that as a percentage of the economy is greater than the U.S.’s 9.1 percent and the 6.3 percent average for euro-region nations. A total 490,000 public-sector jobs will be lost by April 2015 under the measures being carried out by Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne, according to Treasury estimates.

Currency Markets

Bonds sold by British companies have returned 5.17 percent since a June 22 emergency budget weeks after Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal coalition came to power replacing the Labour Party’s 13-year reign. Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s broader index gained 3.71 percent in the period.

Credit-default swaps measuring perceptions of sovereign credit quality also show the U.K. outperforming its peers, with the cost of five-year debt insurance tumbling $17,500 since the start of the year to $65,000 annually for a $10 million contract. In the same period, the swaps on the Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe of 15 countries climbed $72,000 to $141,000, according to CMA.

Currency markets are speculating Cameron’s cuts will hurt economic growth and weaken the pound, which fell to $1.5327 today, down from last month’s high of $1.5999 on Aug. 6.

Spreads on company bonds of only two other nations besides the U.K. narrowed in August, with a 4 basis-point drop on Netherlands securities and a 2 basis-point decline for Japanese corporate notes, Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes show.

A lack of supply of new bonds in pounds has also helped British company debt, and means any increase in demand boosts the securities “disproportionately,” said Suki Mann, head of credit strategy in London at Societe Generale SA, France’s second-largest bank.

Companies sold 119 million pounds of bonds in the U.K. currency in August, the second-slowest month since at least 1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The month with the least issuance was May, with 34 million pounds of bonds.

All I can say is... go UK

[repetitive bleats]

I scanned through it - does it say how many of these bonds were bought by the Yanks?

or mention that we've tripled our holding in US bonds over the last year in reciprocation?

[General Congreve]

Oh I see, this must be why gold is currently at £813/ounce. Glad everything's going to be ok then.

[Timak]

Ah the triumph of the free market where no company may rest lest they be overtaken by a competitor, where prices are always a function of demand and supply and where anyone can triumph with an idea and a sweat on their brow.....

If corporate debt is less risky than the debt of a nation then capitalism (as we now know it) is a sham.

[Lone_Twin]

Ah the triumph of the free market where no company may rest lest they be overtaken by a competitor, where prices are always a function of demand and supply and where anyone can triumph with an idea and a sweat on their brow.....

If corporate debt is less risky than the debt of a nation then capitalism (as we now know it) is a sham.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic?

And your alternative is what? That no company may fail and even those non competative in reality should be "made good" from the profits of viable companies via the public purse like the banks?

Why is it impossible that a company is less risky than the state? The state is just a company with guns.

[Zngland]

Ah the triumph of the free market where no company may rest lest they be overtaken by a competitor, where prices are always a function of demand and supply and where anyone can triumph with an idea and a sweat on their brow.....

If corporate debt is less risky than the debt of a nation then capitalism (as we now know it) is a sham.

you don't get bailouts in capiltalism, UK has been a Socialist country for who knows how long , you should though, forever

blaming a system that does not exist. Socialism, Plutocracy, Fascism and now Globalism all the same the bottom paying for the champagne of

the top and left overs for the pathetic sychophants.

But lets not go down this dead end debate it's the size of the Elite and the degree of personal freedom of the majority and it's

harsh repercussions that matters, oh and the best way to allocate resources and create wealth.

[Cicero]

you don't get bailouts in capiltalism, UK has been a Socialist country for who knows how long , you should though, forever

blaming a system that does not exist. Socialism, Plutocracy, Fascism and now Globalism all the same the bottom paying for the champagne of the top and left overs for the pathetic sychophants.

But lets not go down this dead end debate it's the size of the Elite and the degree of personal freedom of the majority and it's

harsh repercussions that matters, oh and the best way to allocate resources and create wealth.

Agreed.