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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (18305)	9/14/2000 12:37:03 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Respond to of 436258

Apparently, some of the 'cysts don't like Morgan Chase already: quote.bloomberg.com This takeunder is beginning to remind me of WCOM-Sprint... <<Chase-J.P. Morgan Merger to Raise Borrowing Costs (Update2) By Mark Lake New York, Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- For Peter Hong, the treasurer of Ingersoll-Rand Co. and a client of both Chase Manhattan Corp. and J.P. Morgan & Co., their merger means getting credit will be tougher and borrowing costs higher. The two banks just arranged a $1.25 billion credit line for the industrial equipment maker. With the two lenders becoming one, Hong says he'll probably need to persuade another bank to provide credit, which could force him to pay more on his next loan. ``We are concerned that some liquidity will disappear from the market,'' said Hong, whose New Jersey-based company has an ``A2'' credit rating. ``That could have an impact'' on our cost of funds. The wave of bank mergers that has shrunk the pool of lenders the past two years has already raised financing costs for lower- rated investment-grade companies. A merger of the No. 1 and No. 5 supplier of credit may only widen the gulf between most of corporate America and the biggest companies, which have plenty of clout. Chase is by far the largest arranger of corporate loans in the U.S, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The bank has arranged 467 loans totaling $239 billion so far this year, almost twice as much as its nearest rival Bank of America Corp, which arranged 587 loans totalling $149 billion. J.P. Morgan arranged 50 loans totaling $25 billion. ``A huge chunk of corporate America is going to be opposed to this transaction,'' said Lawrence W. Cohn, an analyst at Ryan, Beck & Co. ``Chase and Morgan are huge suppliers of credit. Corporate America is not going to want to see this much concentration.'' New Demands With fewer commercial banks to turn to, companies such as Ford Motor Co. and Genuity Inc. have already asked their investment banks to commit lines of credit as a condition of awarding investment-banking business. While Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. have largely resisted such requests, that's going to get harder as other banks join forces. Both Goldman and Morgan Stanley have relied on their own clout to resist entering a marginally profitable business. The two firms collected one-third of all fees generated by U.S. stocks and bond sales in the first half. A combination of Chase's roster of corporate clients and J.P. Morgan's stock underwriting and other offerings, could cut into that investment-banking business, however. ``I think this marriage will have us considering J.P. Morgan's capability more than we would otherwise be likely to do,'' said Paul Goodwin, chief financial officer and vice chairman of CSX Corp., the third-largest U.S. railroad. ``We may very well do some one-stop shopping.'' Top End Indeed, competition remains fierce among banks to snag the biggest corporate clients. Bank consolidation has not restricted top-rated borrowers access to the $1 trillion syndicated loan market. AT&T Corp., the largest U.S. long-distance telephone company, raised $42 billion from 18 banks in just three days last year to finance its acquisition of MediaOne Group Inc. Chase agreed to arrange Genuity's $2 billion credit line for no fees as a way of getting first refusal on as much as $13 billion of capital markets business the Internet-services provider plans to hand out in the next five years. ``We have no problem securing (credit),'' said Roger Plank, chief financial officer of Apache Corp., an acquisitive oil and natural gas explorer. Then again Apache raised $433.9 million selling stock last month and has made about $2 billion of acquisitions in two years, providing plenty in fees for firms such as Goldman Sachs. Service Cohn said some clients, upset at the effects of a merger between Chase and J.P. Morgan, might take their business, elsewhere. Ingersoll-Rand's Hong said he will wait and see if he gets the same level of attention and service from the new bank before making a decision about who to give the company's business to in the future. It's a different story for smaller firms such as Ace Hardware Corp., the No. 2 U.S. hardware-store co-operative, which said it struggled to a complete a $170 million five-year credit line earlier this year. Sandra Brandt, the company's treasurer, points out that borrowing costs have almost doubled for companies rated ``BBB+'' to ``BBB-'' since the consolidation of large lenders such as Bank of America Corp. and NationsBank Corp. and First Chicago NBD Corp. and Bank One Corp. in 1998. At the end of 1997, Brandt was treasurer at Wallace Computer Services Inc. when it was rated ``BBB+'' and negotiated a yield of 30 basis points more than the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, on a five-year loan for the Illinois-based print services provider. Earlier this year, she had to settle for a yield of 65 basis points more than Libor for Ace Hardware, which isn't rated but has a similar credit profile to Wallace. The three-month Libor rate, one of the most common benchmarks for loans, is currently 6.7 percent, giving the loan a total yield of 7.35 percent. Moreover, Ace doesn't have any mergers and acquisitions or equity business to offer banks as an incentive to cut lending rates, Brandt said. Arranging equity sales generates fees of as much as 7 percent against as little as 0.1 percent for credit lines. For borrowers like Ace, ``consolidation has taken out the supply of credit and liquidity in the market,'' said Brandt.>>

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (18305)	9/14/2000 12:43:13 PM
From: pater tenebrarum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

lol...here's the press release: By Hassan Hafidh BAGHDAD, Sept 14 ( Reuters ) - Iraq's top leaders on Thursday said they wanted to stop trading with the U.S. dollar and replace it with the euro or any other currency. The Iraqi News Agency, quoting a statement by the cabinet after a meeting chaired by President Saddam Hussein, said that the planned move was to confront the "daily American-Zionist aggression" against Iraq. "The cabinet has decided to assign a committee of economists with the task of seriously studying the possibility of using the euro or any other currency instead of the dollar in the commercial transactions of our foreign contracts," the statement said. "...The U.S. dollar is one of the levers of our enemy's influence and power on both regional and international levels," it said.