J. Crew破產為更多的不良債務交換奠定了基礎

2020-06-14由頻長志發佈於財經

近年來，貸款機構簽署的商業貸款條款越來越少，越來越靈活。這使得借款人在當今充滿挑戰的商業環境下，會去尋求不良債務交換(DEs)，而不良債務交換可能會導致貸款損失增加——但這一趨勢未來可能會大幅上升。

這一問題在2017年受到關注，當時J.Crew 集團尋求貸款人進行不良債務交換，後來將其品牌的知識產權轉讓給了一家不屬於其貸款協議的新公司，並將該新公司的有擔保債務作為交換的一部分。債權人認為這與文件條款不符，但他們的訴求在法庭上被駁回。

5月4日，零售商J.Crew 宣佈進行破產申請，其中計劃將16.5億美元債務轉化為股本，穆迪公司投資者服務副總裁Sokolynanska指出，雖然提供定期貸款的債權人失去了J. Crew品牌的抵押，但仍享有優先債權，儘管他們“相對於最初的地位處於較為不利的位置。”

預計情景

Moody's said in a late March report that DEs will likely rise in tandem with corporate defaults.Private equity-owned companies, especially, may turn to them if they are short on cash and can't raise money or obtain waivers or amendments.

“Under a scenario of a sharp-but-short downturn, the number of DEs would climb to 88 in the coming 12 months, up from 41 last year,”the report says. “In a scenario in which the downturn is similar to that of the global financial crisis, the number of DEs would spike to 208 in a year's time.”

Derek Gluckman, vice president-senior covenant officer at Moody's, pointed to carveouts in the investment covenant as a likely vehicle enabling DEs, “since flexibility there remains widespread and often significant in magnitude.”

He added such transactions are also possible with loan-only capital structures, especially problematic for investors believing they had ironclad first-lien security interests in the collateral. “This kind of unanticipated risk exposes lenders to potential unexpected loss,” he said.

第一留置權與第二留置權

Moody's notes that the prototypical DE switches unsecured bonds for a reduced amount of secured second-lien bonds. That preserves loan investors' principal and priority, since unsecured bondholders bear the losses.

However, if there is no unsecured debt in the capital structure, first-lien lenders find themselves in a more problematic situation, losing access to collateral that was originally theirs in the event of a bankruptcy.

For example,the borrower can create new, first-lien debt with higher priority in a couple of ways, such as the investment carve-out strategy used by J. Crew, and use the new debt to pay down the existing debt.

“Lenders under the old debt have more incentive to agree to an exchange or otherwise accommodate the borrower, because some portion of their collateral is now securing that piece of debt instead of their debt,” Gluckman said.

Cash-for-debt exchanges are another alternative – essentially a prepayment.But that typically requires some cash-raising event, such as an asset sale, that may be challenging in today's volatile environment.

END

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