Solent Capital Partners LLP, the U.K. manager of $8.8 billion in hedge funds, may be forced to sell assets in a unit that buys mortgage-backed securities after lenders refused to provide short-term funding.
Solent's Mainsail II Ltd. fund joins issuers including Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, and Toronto-based Coventree Inc. that have been denied financing as rising defaults on subprime loans erode investor confidence in securities backed by mortgages. Yields on the debt soared on Aug. 17 by the most since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Mainsail II is drawing on emergency bank loans after failing to sell asset-backed commercial paper, or short-term IOUs, the fund said today in a statement. Mainsail II, which was set up by London-based Solent last year, issues the debt to invest in longer-dated assets such as mortgage-backed bonds.
Companies are finding it ``difficult to get the cheap funding they're used to,'' said Priya Shah, a structured credit analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort in London. ``We will see more of these.''
This is obviously not welcome news, but it shouldn't be surprising.
