Editorial
The major feature of this year’s December edition is Deals of the Year. After a process which began in earnest in June, the Deals of the Year Panel, and in particular Joanna Parker, has sifted through an enormous amount of background information and data to come up with the final selection. All our readers had their chance to vote for their own favourites in the October issue and we were delighted to be able to announce the final list in the full glare of the Association’s Annual Dinner on 13 November.
Our unique selling point is that we have selected the deals not on the basis purely of biggest and best, but on the merits of the deal as a treasurer would see it. You can see the results, and Joanna’s detailed write-ups and interviews with those at the sharp end, on page 37.
We are already in the process of monitoring the best deals since October this year for next year’s feature. I would encourage any of you who are involved in deals, whether on the corporate side or with a banker’s perspective, to let us know as soon as it happens if you have done a particularly interesting deal. Our regular debt and equity coverage is quite extensive: our Bonds, Loans and Equities tables provide a selection of deals each month (the intention is not to say that these are the best of the month, more to provide an indication of what sort of deals are being done). We do cover deals as case studies from time to time and have regular updates on the state of the market. If you have any suggestions as to how we can improve our coverage (during the year and as part of Deals of the Year), please let me know.
The (other) main highlight of the Annual Dinner was the excellent speech by Sir Edward George. The ACT is proud to have had him speak in both his first year of tenure as Governor of the Bank of England and his last. For those of you who missed it, the text of his speech is reproduced on page 33.
We also include our regular year-end features, including economic forecasts from our Wise Men, forecasts for the debt and equities markets from a selection of experts, and of course a crossword and quiz.
I would like to wish all our readers a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Please do not be offended by not receiving Christmas cards from any of your contacts at the ACT – we have again agreed instead to make a donation to Crisis, a charity for the homeless www.crisis.org.uk.
Finally, readers should be aware that because of the extended Christmas break, your copy of the January 2003 issue won’t be reaching you until the middle of January. For those of you interested in project finance, I can assure you it will be worth the wait.
MIKE HENIGAN
Managing Editor
It’s not the just the us that is suffering at the moment, confidence is down in Germany, Japan and the UK, too, says Neil Mackinnon of the ECU group.
These are a selection of bonds announced recently. The details, updated to the middle of last month, were supplied by Thomson Financial Securities data and other sources.
Welcome to December Hotline. December brings Christmas and due reward for all diligent followers of Hotline who have kept up to date with ongoing developments and made full use of the ACT’s CPD resources.
Just because your firm’s defined benefit scheme has closed to new members doesn’t mean you can just forget about it, says Tony Cunningham.
David Gamble of Airmic explores a new standard that is helping firms get to grips properly with the complexities of risk management
The Sarbanes-Oxley act was meant to restore investor confidence but the ACT’s Chief Executive Richard Raeburn discovered that members have serious reservations.
Treasurers overseeing funding of overseas group firms could find themselves in hot water for failing to comply with the taxes act of 1988, warns Matthew Rose AMCT of BT.
The 5 November saw European council finance ministers take the prospectus directive a step further. John Russell of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood investigates.
Capital contingency is just the thing to help treasurers and insurance risk managers keep their firms on the right financial track, says Henry Kus, David Colarossi and Lee Muller of Chubb Financial Solutions
Andrew Feachem of ABN Amro highlights some of the key themes in what has been a stunning year for credit derivatives and examines how companies are making full use of this product class.
Rt Hon Sir Edward George spoke to more than 1,700 members and guests at the ACT’s annual dinner on 13 November. His entertaining speech is reproduced here.
On 25 April 2002, Accor, the French hotel and services group, launched a €570m bond convertible into ordinary shares of the company at a coupon of 1% – with a premium of 24% that is redeemable in three tranches, with the ultimate redemption due in 4.7 years.
On Monday, 8 April 2002, SSSB launched a $1.1bn five-year convertible bond for Anglo American at a 3.375% coupon and 35% conversion premium. Anglo, under the guiding hand of Cazenove, secured the terms under a bought deal the previous Friday.
On 14 November 2001, CGNU, since renamed Aviva, priced a £1.2bn (equivalent) hybrid capital issue re-opening the market for insurance companies after the events of 11 September.
On 20 June 2002, Boxclever completed an £868m refinancing of bridge facilities put in place at the time of its leveraged buyout two years earlier. This involved a securitisation, combined with a mezzanine term loan and working capital facility.
On 7 March 2002, Imperial Tobacco announced it had agreed to acquire 90.01% of the issued share capital of Reemtsma for a consideration of €5.2bn.
On 12 March 2002, Johnston Press signed a £680m loan facility for syndication, together with a £200m bridge facility to an impending £220m rights issue.
On 8 July 2002, Kingfisher launched a £2bn rights issue, the largest ever underwritten rights issue in UK history, to fund the £3.3bn acquisition of the minority stake in Castorama.
On 21 November 2001, Dutch telecom giant KPN announced a €5bn equity offering, with preferential allocation to existing shareholders that increased its share capital by 83% without wrecking the share price.
Will the us be able to resolve its current financial woes, will the UK finally succumb to EU membership and what will become of Germany and Japan in the year ahead? These are just some of the issues we spoke to five of the UK’s top economists about.
With 2003 fast approaching, we asked those in the know what the future holds for the European bonds markets. Sterling issues and ABS get the thumbs up but elsewhere the message for investors is undoubtedly to retain caution.
We have asked a panel of experts in the loans markets to provide us with their forecasts for 2003.
Equities have been through another tough year, so will 2003 see investors change their tune and return to the equities fold? Chris Tracey of JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management looks ahead.
With huge losses after 9/11, the insurance and reinsurance industries must revise their risk management strategies if they are to survive in the hard market. David Martin of AON provides some reassurance
This edition of The Treasurer was put together just prior to our Annual Dinner on 13 November. For the team in the Association, led by Jane Wicks, the dinner and our annual UK Treasurers’ Conference (UKT) represent the two most important single events put on each year. The dinner is a major logistical exercise, benefiting from the cumulative organisational experience of earlier years but also growing each time in complexity and numbers.
My wife threatened to divorce me a few weeks ago. Was it a serious threat? Well, she did not speak to me for a few days and my daughter warned that she did not want me to ask for visiting rights over her more frequently than once a fortnight, and that she positively did not want to be taken to Mcdonalds or Rumbley zoo on Sunday.
