Banking’s Dark Side Reaches Australia
1 April, 2016
Libya’s Dickens of a Muddle
1 April, 2016Euromoney, April 2016
The extent of the Middle East’s liquidity crunch is coming into focus, as bond redemptions pile up, with little sign of an improvement in primary-market conditions. HSBC has calculated that $94 billion of foreign currency bonds and syndicated loans in the GCC states will mature in the remainder of 2016 and 2017.
The number – made up of $52 billion in bonds and $42 billion in syndicated loans – is big in any market, but becomes more problematic because of an alignment of circumstances. The low oil price has increased the need for funding at exactly the time that investor demand to supply it has dried up.
Secondly, it is apparent that the GCC states, wrestling with deficits for the first time in years, intend to do some of the financing of those deficits through the bond markets, taking up investor appetite that might otherwise be called upon for those redemptions.
Full article: http://www.euromoney.com/Article/3543317/BackIssue/95861/Middle-East-Scale-of-Gulf-wide-credit-crunch-comes-clear
