One lesson the world will have to relearn from the last financial crisis: liquidity is money or some other easily monetizable and unencumbered asset. Revolving lines of credit, letters of credit, and other bank committments become debt when drawn upon. They have an unfortunate tendency to dry up when the debtor most needs them. Even when they are available to be drawn upon, they have to be paid back. When a company starts talking about all its bank commitments and its confidence in its own liquidity, it’s usually a sign of trouble dead ahead. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
Earlier today, in its latest attempt to restore confidence in its brand and business model after suffering a historic stock price collapse, Glencore – whose CDS recently blew out to a level implying a 50% probability of default – released a 4 page funding worksheet which was meant to serve as a simplied summary of its balance sheet funding obligations and lending arrangements to equity research analysts who have never opened a bond indenture, and which among other things provided a simplied and watered-down estimate of what could happen if and when the company is downgraded to junk.
Meanwhile, in a furious race to shore up as much liquidity as possible, Glencore – which a month ago announced a dramatic deleveraging plan – and its peers have been quietly scrambling to raise billions in secured funding. Case in point none other than Glencore’s biggest competitor and the largest independent oil trader in the world, Swiss-based, Dutch-owned Vitol Group, whose Swiss unit Vitol SA earlier today raised a record $8 billion in loans.
It is not alone.
As Bloomberg reports, another name profiled previously here, privately-held (but with publicly-traded debt) Trafigura “won improved terms on a $2.2 billion loan refinancing deal on Oct. 1 via a group of 28 banks. Swiss commodity traders Gunvor Group Ltd. and Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. are also marketing credit facilities totaling $2 billion.”
Louis Dreyfus Commodities, the world’s largest raw-cotton and rice trader, said in its interim report last month that it had six revolving credit facilities with staggered maturity dates totaling $3.3 billion. In June, it amended and extended its North American facilities totaling $1.6 billion and in July it refinanced a $400 million Asian lending facility with the company securing an option to request an increase of $100 million.
Noble Agri, the agricultural commodity trader majority owned by China’s Cofco Corp., attracted four new lenders to its $1.58 billion one-year revolving credit facility, people familiar with the matter said this month.
In short – a race against time to pledge as much unencumbered collateral as possible for future funding needs, because as every CEO knows you raise capital when you can, not when you have to. Yet this is odd, because even as the companies hold investor meetings and publicly comfort investors that they are adequatly funded and see no need for a liquidity-raising scramble, that’s precisely what the world’s commodity traders are doing.
