“It’s the first thing I read every day.” — Brigadier General (retired) Russ Howard, founding director of The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
1. After a half-century of meteoric growth, buyout firms are facing challenges at every step of their life cycle: Attractive takeover targets are scarcer, financing costs are up and it’s harder to cash out old investments and deliver the robust returns once promised to pension managers, endowments, foundations and wealthy individuals. Even dealmakers are frustrated — waiting to collect their share of profits known as carried interest that comes when investments are successfully wrapped up. The snags have slowed fund distributions so dramatically that, at the current rate, it would take about nine years for customers to collect their money from the more than 12,000 companies held by US buyout funds, according to Pitchbook. That’s making clients — known as limited partners — reluctant to pony up fresh capital at a time when Bain & Co. estimates more than 18,000 private capital funds are seeking $3.3 trillion. (Source: bloomberg.com)
2. Lenders to First Brands Group are rushing to shore up the car parts supplier with a new loan as it contemplates a bankruptcy filing. First Brands, a privately held group that boomed through debt-fuelled acquisitions, has rattled US credit markets in recent days on concerns that billions of dollars of debt could be hit in a restructuring. The company has borrowed nearly $6 billion in private loans and has billions of dollars more in financing facilities linked to its customer and supplier invoices, much of which is not reflected in its official debt figures. That off-balance sheet funding could eclipse $4 billion, split across debt underpinned by money that customers owe First Brands and borrowings backed by its inventory, said people with knowledge of this financing. (Source: ft.com)
3. Denmark’s police and military are investigating drone sightings that forced airports in Copenhagen and Oslo to close for several hours, the latest in a string of disruptions to European airspace. Copenhagen Airport, the busiest in Scandinavia, halted all departures and arrivals for nearly four hours late Monday after two or three large drones were spotted in its airspace. Oslo airport did the same for three hours after the sighting of at least one drone. Danish police said the unmanned aircraft came from several directions, and that their size and flight patterns had led authorities to believe a “capable operator” sent them. “It’s an actor who has the capabilities, the will and the tools to show off in this way,” Danish police Chief Superintendent Jens Jespersen said. (Source: wsj.com)
4. Poland will shoot down enemy aircraft if they violate its territory, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Monday. “I want to be very clear. We will make a decision to shoot down flying objects without discussion when they violate our territory and fly over Poland. There is no room for debate here,” Tusk told a press conference. Tusk’s made his comments in the wake of a series of incidents in which Russian drones or warplanes entered the airspace of Poland, Romania and, last Friday, Estonia, when three Russian MiG-31 jets remained in the NATO member state’s airspace for nearly 12 minutes before the alliance scrambled jets in response. (Source: politico.eu)
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