With the rapidly developing crisis in Ukraine, we thought it was worth putting together some notes on high yield and leveraged finance names that could be hit by any further developments. 

Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday, sending markets sharply into risk-off mode and commodity prices spiking higher. Various countries had already unveiled financial sanctions against Russia in response to its recognition of the breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine, and more severe measures are expected to be announced later on in Thursday — we will update this piece as and when more definite measures are confirmed.

Our initial screen used 9fin’s text search tool to look for mentions of Russia and Ukraine across our library of high yield offering documents and reports. We have also looked at names heavily exposed to natural gas price increases, following the suspension of approvals for the Nordstream 2 pipeline, as well as LevFin issuers owned or financed by selected Russian institutions.

Not surprisingly, many of the names on a first pass are generally considered “EM” credit, with headquarters in Russia or Ukraine, and fall outside the mainstream of European high yield.