I spent a lot of time this afternoon worrying about my Assiduous Readers. “Geez”, I thought, “There’s nothing going on today and I can’t think of anything interesting to say about it. What will I do? Without pearls of PrefBlog wisdom, they might fall into evil habits!”
Fortunately, there was CM Equity Issue and the OSFI change in issuance limit to fill in the space.
And it looks like Citigroup’s getting serious, too:
Citigroup Inc. plans to eliminate more than 20,000 jobs, slash its quarterly dividend and collect at least $10 billion in cash from outside investors to shore up capital eroded by subprime losses, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
About 6,500 of the more than 20,000 job cuts will be in the investment bank, the Journal said. The largest investor to add new capital is the Government Investment Corp. of Singapore, the report said. The Kuwait Investment Authority, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and at least one U.S. fund management firm are also investing in Citigroup, the Journal said.
So the world is recapitalizing as it should. But it definitely looks like the centre of the financial world is shifting a little!
PerpetualDiscounts were up again today as volume returned to entirely reasonable levels. The market is still volatile however – the “price moves” list is always longer than I expect!
| Note that these indices are experimental; the absolute and relative daily values are expected to change in the final version. In this version, index values are based at 1,000.0 on 2006-6-30 | |||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) | Mean YTW | Mean Average Trading Value | Mean Mod Dur (YTW) | Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 5.35% | 5.36% | 57,411 | 14.87 | 2 | +0.5976% | 1,071.6 |
| Fixed-Floater | 4.92% | 5.36% | 73,791 | 15.04 | 9 | +0.3295% | 1,037.4 |
| Floater | 5.29% | 5.29% | 90,410 | 15.05 | 3 | +0.0835% | 838.5 |
| Op. Retract | 4.84% | 2.80% | 80,133 | 3.31 | 15 | +0.2095% | 1,041.4 |
| Split-Share | 5.25% | 5.39% | 100,249 | 4.33 | 15 | -0.1196% | 1,043.8 |
| Interest Bearing | 6.29% | 6.42% | 60,056 | 3.43 | 4 | +0.0002% | 1,070.6 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.77% | 4.69% | 65,505 | 5.20 | 12 | -0.0374% | 1,022.6 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.42% | 5.44% | 342,922 | 14.32 | 54 | +0.1479% | 945.7 |
| Major Price Changes | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| FTU.PR.A | SplitShare | -2.5747% | Asset coverage of 1.7+:1 as of December 31 according to the company. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.65% based on a bid of 9.46 and a hardMaturity 2012-12-1 at 10.00. |
| BAM.PR.G | FixFloat | -1.0495% | |
| BCE.PR.B | Ratchet | +1.2053% | |
| BNA.PR.C | SplitShare | +1.4778% | Asset coverage of 3.6+:1 as of December 31, according to the company. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.74% based on a bid of 20.60 and a hardMaturity 2019-1-10 at 25.00. Compare with BNA.PR.A (5.88% to 2010-9-30) and BNA.PR.B (6.71% to 2016-3-25). |
| BCE.PR.G | FixFloat | +1.6667% | |
| IGM.PR.A | OpRet | +1.8484% | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 3.13% based on a bid of 27.00 and a call 2009-7-30 at 26.00. |
| BCE.PR.Z | FixFloat | +1.9983% | |
| POW.PR.D | PerpetualDiscount | +2.0348% | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.21% based on a bid of 24.07 and a limitMaturity. |
| ELF.PR.G | PerpetualDiscount | +2.5745% | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.88% based on a bid of 20.32 and a limitMaturity. |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Volume | Notes |
| IQW.PR.D | Scraps (would be Ratchet, but there are credit concerns) | 311,320 | Answer Hazy. Try again Later. |
| IQW.PR.C | Scraps (would be OpRet but there are credit concerns) | 115,000 | |
| GWO.PR.I | PerpetualDiscount | 95,459 | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.32% based on a bid of 21.36 and a limitMaturity. |
| MFC.PR.C | PerpetualDiscount | 34,247 | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.09% based on a bid of 22.31 and a limitMaturity. |
| PWF.PR.G | PerpetualPremium | 26,800 | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.60% based on a bid of 25.21 and a call 2011-8-16 at 25.00. |
| GWO.PR.H | PerpetualDiscount | 26,147 | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.38% based on a bid of 22.72 and a limitMaturity. |
| RY.PR.G | PerpetualDiscount | 25,809 | Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.25% based on a bid of 21.67 and a limitMaturity. |
There were twenty-one other index-included $25.00-equivalent issues trading over 10,000 shares today.