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The primary market turned scrappy this week, and there were a few black eyes as PG&E pulled a $2.7bn loan extension, bankers and investors tussled over doc changes in MoneyGram’s LBO debt, and prison phone provider Aventiv struggled to find support for its loan deal.

Certain hedge fund managers weren’t pulling punches either, as embattled Carl Icahn geared up for a fight with short seller Hindenberg Research. That row has already pushed the yield on Icahn Enterprises senior debt towards 12%.

Meanwhile, companies are making concessions on pricing and terms to attract demand for new issuance. As we outlined last week, appetite is being squeezed by weak CLO formation, CLOs coming out of reinvestment, outflows from loan funds, and the availability of cheap secondary paper.

Oh, and the small matter of the impending deadline on raising the US debt ceiling has cast a shadow over markets, even if recent reports suggest a deal is close.

“There’s nothing you can do to position for it, but we’re in line with the consensus that these knuckleheads will get something done,” said one high yield PM.

Bankers initially planned to wrap up the syndication of the debt financing for Madison Dearborn’s LBO of MoneyGram well in time for a relaxing Memorial Day weekend.

No dice, unfortunately: it looks like they’ll be spending the holiday hashing out lender-friendly changes to the deal docs, after some investor pushback.

Though the deal is said to be covered and expected to price early next week, sources said some lenders were concerned about the company’s ability to strip cash from the restricted group and upstream it to the holdco, where MoneyGram is taking out $100m of senior debt and $300m of preferred equity as part of the $2.04bn financing package for the deal.

That’s on top of the tough competitive landscape for money transfers, which we outlined in a deal preview earlier this week. Still, there’s a price for everything.

“It’s also a really competitive space, with Venmo and Paypal etc, but at some point 12%-13% the price is worth it,” said the high yield PM.

Similarly on the bond side, Seagate dangled enticing 8.25% and 8.5% coupons to raise $1bn across new 2029 and 2031 SUNs — not bad, sources said, considering the notes’ Ba3/BB/BB+ ratings (the average BB yield is around 7.3%, according to JP Morgan analysts).

But, as PG&E’s decision to pull its amend and extend deal shows, paying up to extend debt in this market might be a tough pill to swallow for some CFOs, especially if their current capital structure was financed in the ultra low-rate era.

Of course, investors see this in a different light.

“The window's open,” said Tom Majewski, managing partner and founder of Eagle Point Credit Management, on the company’s Q1 earnings call on Wednesday. “If you're facing a medium-term debt maturity, it makes sense to refinance wider just to get yourself some runway. We love that.”

In keeping with that sentiment, Chatham Asset Management also said it was “deeply dismayed” by Rayonier Advanced Materials lack of progress on dealing with its 2024 maturities this week. Chatham is the company’s biggest creditor.

“Rather than shopping around for what it deems as ‘acceptable terms,’ the Board’s fiduciary duty should be to accept the prevailing market rate for its debt, regardless of whether this represents a concession to the current trading level of the 2026 Notes,” the fund wrote.

One option that some borrowers are taking to get around the high cost of debt and the CLO reinvestment issue is to offer short-dated paper: Inmar, for example is out with a 3-year $950m TLB due 2026 (rated B-/B3) via Jefferies.

According to sources familiar with the transaction, this is because many current lenders are older-vintage CLOs nearing the end of their reinvestment periods.

And like other issuers of late, Inmar is hoping a fresh equity injection (in the form of a preferred slug from sponsor OMERS and outside investors) can get lenders on board with a refinancing.

If the MoneyGram syndication had some back-and-forth, it was probably nothing compared with what the syndication of Tegna’s buyout financing would have looked like, had the deal gone ahead.

Underwriters probably breathed a sigh of relief at not having to try and push another under-water commitment through the market, after regulators threw cold water on Standard General’s $8.6bn take-private deal.

The saga may not be over for Standard General, though. According to a report in The Deal, the Federal Communication Commission’s enforcement bureau says the private equity firm made bogus claims just days before the deal collapsed that the FCC was willing to negotiate to save the transaction.

While that jumbo LBO financing package is off the table, another one comes into view with Syneos Health being taken private by a team of three sponsors including Elliott Investment Management and Veritas Capital in a deal that values the company at $7.1bn.

This week we had a deeper look at the buyout, the $4bn debt financing package and the background of the third sponsor, Patient Square Capital.

If you’re a loan investor and about to head out for the long weekend, you might want to check your inbox for Libor amendments.

Here’s Eagle Point’s Dan Ko on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday talking about how loan agents love to slip Libor to SOFR amendments out ahead of a long weekend, in the hope that fewer investors will object to the credit spread adjustment on offer.

The debate over compensation for accepting the lower yielding SOFR base rate is ongoing between borrowers and investors, particularly CLO equity investors such as Eagle Point, whose returns are squeezed by any CSA mismatch between loans and CLO debt.

The Libor transition has been underway for several years now, but somehow the leveraged loan market has channeled its inner college student and left this very important project to the last minute. Earlier this week we wrote how there’s still over $800bn of Libor loans that need to be switched over to SOFR, with less than six weeks to go until the deadline.

It turns out that it’s not just Squarespace that celebrates the side-hustle life — plenty of levfin borrowers have side gigs that investors may or may not be fully aware of.

For example, we discovered this week with the help of 9fin’s new AI-driven transcript tool, that UK restaurant chain Pizza Express quietly launched a record label a few weeks ago.

Why is a pizza chain getting into the music business, you ask? Well, Pizza Express is a stalwart of the London jazz scene, with three live music venues and a huge back catalog of recordings, so this actually makes a decent amount of sense.

However, restaurants don’t exactly have a great track record in the music biz. You might recall Starbucks’s ill-fated foray into the music industry at the start of the century.

We’ve also been thinking of other off-beat side gigs that levfin borrowers have embarked on: MoneyGram’s sponsorship of the Haas F1 team, maybe? AMC Entertainment’s goldmine? MicroStrategy’s bet on bitcoin is less a side-gig and more the whole enchilada at this point, but that came to mind too. Drop us a line if you have any other examples.

Speaking of AI-assisted content, we published a feature this week on how generative AI could transform the role of analysts. Reporters William Hoffman and Shubham Saharan also discussed the technology and its game-changing potential with US editor Will Caiger-Smith on this week’s Cloud9 podcast.

SoftBank explores plans to become a lender in private credit (Bloomberg)

Blackstone struggles to sell private credit to Europe’s rich (Bloomberg)

A DEI exec at Uber was placed on leave after hosting an event about white women who don't like being called a 'Karen’ (Insider)

Apollo's big bet on insurance put to test (Bloomberg)

Listed private-equity firms stress credit role (WSJ)

The fall of Vice: private equity’s ill-fated bet on media’s future (FT)

Nvidia stuns markets and signals how artificial intelligence could reshape technology sector (AP)

Yelp jumps as activist investor seeks sale or merger with Angi (Reuters)

Ford EVs will use Tesla’s charging plug starting next year (The Verge)

This article contains links to a number of 9fin articles and company pages. If you would like to find out more about how 9fin is a one stop shop, please take a look at our financials, comparables and search functionality.

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