Creditflux Newsletter

Congratulations to credit derivatives founding father Robert Reoch who completed a 163km walk over Dartmoor and Exmoor in the south west of England to raise money for Families for Children.

The charity places children from troubled backgrounds with new families, providing a better future than being in the care of local authorities. He completed the gruelling but scenic route in just under 28 hours. Readers can donate to show their support at www.familiesforchildren.org.uk.

There may be fewer banks pumping out credit research, but analysts are trying as hard as ever to catch investors’ attention with insightful trading ideas and tenuous tennis analogies.

Metaphor of the month comes from Citi’s high-yield weekly recap. “These days the credit markets have been as dominant as the Russian women at the French open, the difference being people actually care about the credit markets,” write the strategists in John Fenn’s team, serving up a barb that Svetlana Kuznetsova would no doubt power back with an unanswerable forehand down the line. Love-15.

Bankers are among the most competitive people on earth. These days they are competing about how stingy they are with their balance sheets.

At the LSTA conference in London last month Denis Coleman, co-head of loans at Goldman Sachs, made the point that every investor he meets asks for debtor-in-possession loans.

“I feel inadequate that I can’t provide them,” he joked.

“That’s funny,” countered Tom Newberry, his opposite number at Credit Suisse. “They tell us that Goldman is showing them all the DIPs.”