Tracking data in our market is often a challenge. As we’ve said in other contexts, there are three levels of fabrication: lies, damnable lies, and leveraged loan statistics. Yet when a variety of metrics point in the same direction, we suspect a semblance of truth is buried somewhere. Such is the case with data showing…
Last week we took on the question of deal flow. How does the backdrop of M&A activity relate to the volume of reported sponsored debt financings? This week, we took to the road in search of answers. At the SuperReturn Private Credit conference in Chicago, we chaired the first day of panels, so had a…
“I left it right on the piano bench. Now I can’t find it!” Our daughter’s flute instruction book had somehow vanished or walked off on its own. Her father is notified of this catastrophe three minutes before she is to be dropped off for her 7:30 a.m. lesson. Well, when was the last time you…
D28 made headline news last week. No, we’re not referring to a new Stars War character. And it’s not a winning move in German Bingo. D28 is an iceberg. In what glaciologists said was not a global warming-related event, D28 “calved” off from the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, making quite a splash. Depending…
News reached us last week of the passing of Anthony Mancinelli. According to Guinness World Records, Mr. Mancinelli at 108 was the oldest working barber. Cutting hair since Warren Harding occupied the White House, the barber from Naples emigrated to the US in 1919 and opened his first shop in Newburgh, NY. He kept snipping…
Bastille Day is a French national holiday in July with fireworks and parades. This year it was also celebrated in Paris by a “dazzling” test of the Flyboard Air – a jet-powered hoverboard. Its inventor, Franky Zapata, hoped to become the first to cross the English Channel on such a vehicle. So hopes were riding…
Two years ago we featured on these pages Oumuamua, a comet masquerading as an alien space ship [link]. Last we heard it was heading out of the solar system. Now the Crimean Astrophysics Observatory has detected another interstellar visitor – Borisov, named after its discoverer. About six miles in diameter, this comet has a hyperbolic…
News reached us last week of a two-headed snake found in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. The young timber rattlesnake(s?), nicknamed Double Dave, was discovered by two environmentalists, Dave Schneider and Dave Burkett. Co-headedness, known as polycephaly, happens rarely in nature, and occasionally in finance. Double Dave’s brains operate independently. But two heads…
Despite our known deficiencies on the links, we were invited last week to a superb round of golf with other direct lending professionals at a course in Summit, NJ. ‘Superb’ because we walked away with ‘closest-to-the-pin’ honors. Though in fairness, 48 feet, eight inches is hardly close to anything. And we didn’t even make the…
We mentioned last week Apollo’s $1.8 billion financing for New Media Investment Group’s acquisition of Gannett & Co. It seemed like one of the largest non-bank buy-out deals ever. A banker friend of The Lead Left agreed: “You remember Ares’ Qlik deal in 2016.” she said. “That was a shock to the market when it…