Turning Japanese: a loans market to beat its rivals

Key points covered in the article by Daniel Moreno, Senior Originator, Loan Syndications in Treasury Today include:

The Samurai loans market is liquid, with a large pool of players looking for highly-rated borrowers, who are themselves looking for funding diversity. In the past year, more than 20 deals have been closed in Europe for a range of blue-chip corporates such as SSE, National Grid and Tesco.

There are now more than 80 active participants in the market, whereas as recently as 2010 there were just 20. There has also been a corresponding widening of lenders' acceptable lending criteria. In many cases this can mean lending to privately-owned and unrated companies.

It is borrowers with larger funding needs that are the most active. Not least, because it allows them to diversify their creditor base. These often include major corporates, commodity traders (often unrated, privately-owned and less active in the capital markets), infrastructure-related companies, and financial institutions.