PrefBlog

CC&L Group announced yesterday:

that Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”) placed its ratings on CC&L ROC’s Preferred Shares on CreditWatch with negative implications. S&P expects to resolve the CreditWatch placement within a period of 90 days and update its opinion. The Preferred Shares are currently rated P-2 (high).

The move comes as a result of the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. credit event announced on September 15, 2008 as well as several downgrades of companies held in the Reference Portfolio as a consequence of the ongoing extremely difficult conditions facing the United States financial system.
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The Preferred Shares are listed for trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol RPQ.PR.A.

There was another announcement that:

Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”) lowered its ratings on ROC III’s Preferred Shares from P-2 (low) to P-4 (high) and placed them on CreditWatch with negative implications. As indicated in a press release dated September 11, 2008, the ratings on the Preferred Shares were expected to be adversely affected by recent events. S&P expects to resolve the CreditWatch placement within a period of 90 days and update its opinion.

The move comes as a result of credit events in the Reference Portfolio, namely Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as several downgrades of companies held in the Reference Portfolio as a consequence of the ongoing extremely difficult conditions facing the United States financial system. CC&L and ROC III are reviewing and will explore the options, legal and otherwise, that are available to ROC III relating to the delivery of the credit event notices in respect of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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The Preferred Shares are listed for trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol RPB.PR.A.

And, just in time for the weekend comes today’s announcement:

that the closure of Washington Mutual (“WaMu”) by the Office of Thrift Supervision and naming of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) as receiver is expected to constitute a credit event under the Companies’ credit linked notes (“CLN”). TD Bank is the issuer of the CLN for ROC III and The Bank of Nova Scotia is the issuer of the CLN for CC&L ROC.

This credit event is a consequence of the ongoing extremely difficult conditions facing the United States financial system. Connor, Clark & Lunn is disappointed with the impact this crisis has had on the performance of the Companies and is reviewing strategic alternatives for the Companies.

The last post on these issues was in connection with the Lehman bankruptcy. Neither of these issues is tracked by HIMIPref™.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Issue Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.