More Signs of a Corporate Credit Crunch

From CBS.Marketwatch:

In the past two weeks, another 13 corporate loan or bond deals have been postponed or reduced, representing slightly less than $43 billion, according to new research released Thursday by Baring Asset Management.

That lifts the total number of deals pulled since June 22nd to 46, analysts at the firm said. They valued those at more than $60 billion. Last year, no pulled deals were counted by the firm's research staff.

The amount of incomplete cash-financed leveraged buyouts and management-led buyouts sitting on bank balance sheets remains substantial, wrote Toby Nangle, a fixed-income manager at Barings, in a note.

He estimated that such debt totaled around $400 billion. "The bond and loan markets know that banks will come knocking sooner or later, asking to refinance loans that they have made to private-equity firms," Nangle added.