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The Chicago City Council gave final approval on Wednesday to $1 billion of revenue bonds to continue expanding O’Hare International Airport.
But the two major carriers at the airport are not saying if they plan on fighting the debt sale.
A spokesman for American Airlines said there was “no comment at this time.” Get the full story »
Only 22 percent of investors under the age of 35 say they’re willing to take on a substantial level of risk, according to the Investment Company Institute. Compare that with 2001, when that same group outpaced every other age bracket.
“We’re coming off a series of financial crises that hit this young generation at points in their lives where external events shape strong opinions,“ said Christopher Geczy, adjunct associate professor of finance at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Get the full story »
Sara Lee Corp. said Monday that it is launching a cash tender offer to buy back $1.11 billion in debt.
The offer covers the outstanding amount of a series of bonds due in September 2011. The Downers Grove-based company said the offer expires on Sept. 7. Bondholders who tender their notes will receive any unpaid interest that has accrued between the last interest payment date and the offer’s to-be-determined settlement date. Get the full story »
Oak Brook-based McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant chain, sold $29 million in yuan-denominated notes, becoming the first foreign non-financial company to sell yuan-denominated bonds in Hong Kong.
Northern Trust Chief Investment Officer Bob Browne said in an interview with Steve Forbes that he’s still investing in high-yield bonds and anchoring investments with gold.
He said he’s surprised by people who have very strongly-held views about the direction of the market at this point in time. “We’re decisively neutral,” he said. “We think it can go either way and we’re placing a lot of value on liquidity and flexibility.”
The brief honeymoon with stocks has come to another abrupt halt as investors once again have decided to flee from risk. Treasury bonds are a favorite security blanket again even though they are promising very little to investors locking up their money for as much as 10 years.
As nervous people have flooded bonds with money, yields have dropped to just 2.7 percent. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial average has fallen 320 points in two days as the Federal Reserve has spooked investors with deflation talk and as more people have filed for unemployment benefits. See where the full stock market has taken investors since happy days faded in 2007.
About 120 Illinois and California residents thought they were investing more than $20 million in Turkish Eurobonds when, in fact, a Lisle man and others were spending the money on luxury automobiles, homes, vacations and online pornography, the Illinois Department of Insurance alleged Tuesday.
The state’s action follows a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in March in which the federal regulator said the group was using the investors’ money to also buy a stamp collection, and also invest in “the cryogenic preservation of umbilical cord stem cells.” Get the full story »
Fitch Ratings reduced its rating on city bonds Thursday, citing Chicago’s rapid use of one-time reserves to balance past operating budgets, its underfunding of pension obligations and its steep declines in tax revenue.
Fitch cut its rating on $6.8 billion in outstanding general obligation bonds by one notch, from AA+ to AA, which is the third rung from the top (and still considered high quality.) But the agency also issued a negative outlook, and warned that further downgrades were possible if the city doesn’t balance its operating budget and address its retiree benefit costs — or if the local economy gets worse. Get the full story »
Investors demonstrated an appetite for Illinois bonds Wednesday when the state went to market with a $900 million issue, but as expected, they extracted a higher yield because of the state’s dismal financial condition.
More than $2 billion in orders came in for the taxable Build America bond issue, a show of strong demand, said John Sinsheimer, the state’s director of capital markets. Overall, the bonds drew 93 investors, including 17 from overseas who bought about 29 percent of the issue. Get the full story »
U.S. Treasury prices fell Wednesday as traders booked profits on recent safe-haven trades driven by worries the U.S. economic recovery has hit a wall. Less grim data and another mid-day Wall Street rally after recent lows also put downward pressure on the bond market, analysts said. Get the full story »
Jeffrey Gundlach, the star bond fund manager who proclaimed in 2007 that subprime mortgages were going to become an unmitigated disaster, is not optimistic now either.
But rather than fearing runaway inflation, as many Americans do, Gundlach is concerned that the nation has at least a couple of years of deflation ahead and perhaps a double dip recession. Speaking at the Morningstar annual conference in Chicago he said the country is burdened by debt levels so high that they cannot go on much longer without threatening the country.
