E' tempo di vendere... (Black di Apollo) - GZ
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By: GZ on Domenica 05 Maggio 2013 04:03
traduzione del principale articolo su Barron's settimanale di oggi
^"Un tempo per vendere e prendere in prestito ..."#http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748703591404578453000846155088.html?mod=BOL_hps_mag#articleTabs_article%3D1^
Da Randall W. Forsyth, Barron's, sabato 4 maggio
Leon Black, capo di Apollo Global Management, ha visto questo film prima e sa come andrà a finire.
"Per ogni cosa c'è una stagione".
No, i Byrds non avevano inventato loro questa parte della loro canzone, viene dalla Bibbia. E quando ^Pete Seeger ha composto Turn! Turn! Turn!#http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y7P4n2uT0w^, ha messo in musica le parole del Libro dell'Ecclesiaste. Quel famoso versetto è stato citato di nuovo la settimana scorsa, questa volta da un finanziere miliardario.
"E' quasi biblico. C'è un tempo per raccogliere e c'è un tempo per seminare," Leon Black, presidente e amministratore delegato di ^Apollo Global Management#http://www.agm.com/Home.aspx^ (Ticker: APO) ha detto alla conferenza globale del Milken Institute di Los Angeles, alludendo a quello stesso passaggio scritturale. "Stiamo vendemmiando e raccogliendo i frutti", ha sottolineato.
Ovvero il colosso del private equity è da mesi un venditore netto, perché le cose semplicemente non possono ora andare meglio di così. "Pensiamo che sia un ambiente favoloso per VENDERE," dice Black, notando Apollo ha venduto circa $ 13 miliardi di asset negli ultimi 15 mesi. "Stiamo vendendo tutto ciò che non è proprio inchiodato per terra. E se non stiamo vendendo, stiamo rifininanziando, cioè prendendo a prestito visto che non si paga quasi niente...
Questo perché non c'è mai stato un momento migliore di quello attuale per prendere in prestito - il che per Black è un brutto segnale. "Il mercato per chi si indebita è così buono come non lo abbiamo mai incontrato. Siamo tornati ai livelli del 2007. Non c'è memoria tra gli investitori...", ha osservato, riferendosi al picco dell'ultima bolla del credito. Fu allora CEO di allora-Citigroup Chuck Prince disse "...fino a quando la musica suona, (i banchieri) devono continuare a ballare - cosa che fecero, con conseguenze disastrose quando la band di colpo smise di suonare con Lehman....
Il punto di vista attuale di Black è radicato nella sua lunga esperienza, che ha abbracciato i boom del credito e i crash degli ultimi tre decenni di storia finanziaria. E 'iniziato con la Drexel Burnham (il cui junk-bond unità era diretto da Michael Milken, al cui convegno eponimo di nome Black era uno degli speaker), dove ha aiutato il mercato del junk-bond a nascere nel 1980 - prima del suo crash con la scomparsa di Drexel e Milken per crimini finanziari vari nel 1988. Black ha co-fondato Apollo poco dopo, nel 1990. Poi è arrivata la bolla dot-com e il suo crash nel 2001, che è stata seguita dalla bolla immobiliare e relativo crash nel 2008
Black è ora molto diffidente, non solo perché ha visto questo film prima e sa come va a finire, ma perchè ne è stato uno dei protagonisti come insider. Oggi le quotazioni dei suoi investimenti non sono stati migliori, mentre il debito non è mai stato così a buon mercato. Ma gli investitori di private equity come Apollo hanno bisogno di anticipare i tracolli in tempo e Black dice che oggi non trova più niente da comprare prezzato in moro ragionevole, perchè i valori sono inflazionati.
(^continua qui in inglese per chi vuole leggere il resto#http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748703591404578453000846155088.html?mod=BOL_hps_mag#articleTabs_article%3D2^
THAT THE MARKET FOR FINANCING has never been this good was evident in the land rush of corporate and government borrowers -- from blue chips to cow chips in terms of pedigree -- into whose hands investors were eager to thrust their money.
Apple (AAPL) stole the show with its record $17 billion blowout deal that had corporate bond investors lined up the way iPhone buyers once queued up for the latest iteration. As a result of a reported $50 billion in orders for the securities, the cult company from Cupertino was able to borrow at vanishingly low interest rates -- as little as 0.45% for three-year, fixed-rate debt -- to return some $100 billion in cash to its shareholders by the end of 2015. Apple also avoided as much as $9.2 billion in taxes by borrowing instead of repatriating its $145 billion hoard of cash, mostly held abroad, a Moody's analyst told Bloomberg News. Meanwhile, the underwriters, led by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, pocketed $53.25 million in fees for peddling the bonds, which sold themselves, as evidenced by their generating nearly $3 in orders for every $1 of securities sold. Nice work if you can get it.
Other gilt-edged credits also took advantage of the generous terms on offer, such as International Business Machines (IBM), which matched Apple's 0.45% three-year borrowing tab, while setting a record low of 1.625% for a seven-year maturity. Equally astounding is what is happening in what is still called the high-yield market, where yields hit a record low of 5.12%, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch High Yield Master Index II.
And the reach for yield extends around the globe. Chinese oil company CNOOC (CEO) sold $4 billion in debt last week, for which Bloomberg says it got nearly six times as much in bids, with the bulk going to U.S. asset managers. But the biggest beneficiaries of this blind frenzy have been governments that not long ago were virtual pariahs in the capital markets, such as Rwanda, as noted here last week. In addition, Slovenia -- which was thought just weeks ago to be a candidate to follow in the footsteps of Cyprus as a euro-zone catastrophe -- was able to borrow $3.5 billion, despite seeing its credit rating cut below investment grade. And Slovenia received $16 billion in bids for those bonds -- equal to nearly one-third of its gross domestic product -- for five-year securities yielding 4.95% and 10-year bonds yielding 6%.
But compared with other dubious debtors in the euro zone had to offer, those yields seemed positively generous. Yields on benchmark government bonds in Spain and Italy are under 4%, while Portugal's are at 5.50%. And those were high, compared with 10-year German bunds, which hit a record low yield of 1.16% last week.
Investors are falling all over themselves to fund borrowers good, bad, and indifferent. If that reminds you of the subprime-mortgage melt-up of the middle of the last decade, when anybody with a pulse could borrow -- aided and abetted by the capital markets -- it also does to the likes of Leon Black.
THIS DESPERATE REACH FOR YIELD, of course, is a product of central banks' drive to push interest rates to the floor and flood the financial system to drag down borrowing costs for corporations, homeowners or buyers, and second-tier governments, all to spur stagnant economies. Those economies aren't growing because of the effects of the bursting of the previous bubble, which was inflated to offset the bubble before that, but never mind.
The full-court press extended to the European Central Bank, which lowered its key policy rate, as expected, by a quarter of a percentage point, to 0.5%. Mario Draghi, its chief, said the ECB, to spur the banks to expand credit, could conceivably charge them a fee to park their cash at the central bank, instead of paying them interest.
Back in the U.S., the Fed's Open Market Committee said that it could boost or reduce its current $85 billion-a-month securities purchases, depending on the outlook for the economy. Previously, the markets and Fed watchers were wondering mainly about a tapering, instead of a possible increase, in the central bank's bond-buying spree.
All of which has produced the best of all possible worlds for the stock market: Good news is good news, while bad news means continued central-bank money-printing. And with favorable headlines Friday about the U.S. jobs market, major averages hit historic highs.
The markets were surprised by news that nonfarm payrolls rose 165,000 in April, a bit better than the consensus call for a 150,000 increase but a lot better when sharp upward revisions in the two preceding months totaling 114,000 workers were added in. The unemployment rate -- derived from a separate survey of households -- ticked down to 7.5% from 7.6% (actually to 7.51% from 7.57% before rounding to one decimal place), but this time it was because more people had jobs, not because people dropped out of the labor force.
But the details of the jobs report were less cause for exuberance than the stock market displayed. Despite expanded payrolls and a lower official jobless rate, Americans actually worked less last month because of a 0.2- hour drop in the workweek, resulting in total hours worked dropping 0.4% for the month. The U-6 underemployment rate, which covers folks who are working part-time but want full-time gigs or have stopped looking for work, ticked up to 13.9% from 13.8%, the first rise since last July, Philippa Dunne and Doug Henwood of the Liscio Report note. And in the household survey, some 306,000 joined the ranks of the self-employed, more than the total 293,000 overall gain.
Says David Rosenberg, chief economist of Gluskin Sheff: "So we had a lot of folks ostensibly becoming consultants working out of their basement offices in April and not exactly picking up much business according to what the income numbers told us for the month," with average weekly earnings off 0.4%.
During bubbles, such nettlesome details tend to get overlooked.
