High-yield/macroeconomics (fka YIELD)

[Preciouslife1]

Pimco, Franklin, GM Bondholders May Lose 75% for Aid (Update3)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aaAS8yZ86rK8&refer=home
By Jeff Green and Caroline Salas

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) ** General Motors Corp. may ask unsecured debt holders Franklin Resources Inc. and Pimco Advisors LP to accept as much as two-thirds less than the face value of their bonds as the automaker cuts debt in a bid to win U.S. government aid.

GM bonds trade for 13 to 22 cents on the dollar and the company may only offer a slight premium over that, estimated Pete Hastings, a fixed income analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis. GM needs to pare its debt below the current $43 billion even if it gets the $12 billion in government loans sought, people familiar with the matter said earlier this week.

“It’s not a pretty choice, but beggars cannot be choosers,” Hastings said. “Layering federal debt help on top of the existing debt wouldn’t leave us with a viable entity.
Let’s hope that all constituencies contribute with an equal amount of pain.”

Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner is under a Dec. 2 deadline set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to show how he’ll reshape operations as a condition of a $25 billion industry rescue. Congress may vote on the package on Dec. 8.

The largest U.S. automaker also may ask to delay a $7 billion payment to a union retiree health fund, drop more brands and rework an accord with GMAC LLC to prove it can survive and repay the government, the people familiar with the plans said.

Board Meetings

GM’s board will meet Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 to review the plan before it is released to Congress and the public.

Wagoner would have to persuade debt holders, also including Lord Abbett & Co., Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Fidelity PPM America according to regulatory filings, to go along with paring the debt, making it likely that any definitive accords won’t be done by the Dec. 2 deadline, the people said.

Julie Gibson, a GM spokeswoman, had no comment on GM’s plans. Lisa Gallegos, Franklin spokeswoman, declined comment.
Mark Hudoff, investment manager at Pimco and Chris Towle, fund manager at Lord Abbett, didn’t return phone calls.

GM’s 8.375 percent bonds due in 2033 rose 5 cents to 19 cents on the dollar to yield 43 percent, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The debt has fallen from 36.5 cents at the end of October and 81 cents at the end of last year, Trace data show.

GM rose $1.25, or 35 percent, to $4.81 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the biggest gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Interest Expense

The automaker has interest expense of about $2.9 billion on its $43.3 billion in bonds, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Himanshu Patel wrote in a report yesterday. Without a cut in debt, interest may rise to $3.8 billion on debt of $60 billion, he said.

“We think interest expense reduction is needed immediately for cash flow improvement, but GM simply needs to reduce overall leverage,” Patel wrote. “This suggests principal reduction should be one of the primary drivers of debt restructuring. We think a combination of debt-for-debt and debt-for-equity exchanges could be employed.”

Lawmakers grilled Wagoner during two days of testimony last week before deadlocking over how to let money-losing GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC tap $25 billion in low-interest borrowing amid U.S. sales that may slump next year to the lowest since 1991.

Cash Burn

GM has pared $9 billion in annualized costs since 2005, and is trying to reduce expenses by an additional $15 billion a year by the end of 2009. The automaker said Nov. 7 it still may run out of cash to pay monthly bills by the end of this year.

After burning through $6.9 billion in cash last quarter, GM said it had $16.2 billion as of Sept. 30, raising the prospect of falling short by year’s end of the $11 billion minimum needed to pay monthly bills. GM has said a bankruptcy filing would be a “disaster.”

GMAC LLC, owned 49 percent by GM, began an exchange offer of its own on Nov. 20 for $38 billion of notes issued by the company and its Residential Capital LLC home-lending unit to reduce outstanding debt. GMAC is seeking to become a bank holding company to gain access to part of the $700 billion in a U.S. government bailout fund.

Swapping Debt

GMAC is offering to buy back notes for as little as 55 cents on the dollar in cash. Alternatively, holders can swap their debt for an equivalent amount of senior notes and preferred stock. ResCap holders will tender at a rate of as little as 20 cents on the dollar.

A GM offer would probably be better than Rescap’s for holders but not as good as GMAC’s, Hastings said.

GM sold 51 percent of GMAC to a group led by buyout firm Cerberus Capital Management LP in 2006.

A group of bondholders has hired Andrew Rosenberg, partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, to represent them in opposing the GMAC debt exchange.

Holders of about $18 billion of the $26 billion of GMAC debt that is eligible for the exchange participated in a conference call yesterday to discuss their plan, Rosenberg said in an interview from his New York office. The group is led by Adam Rubinson of Dodge & Cox, according to people familiar with the discussions. Rubinson didn’t return two phone calls seeking comment.

Many of the same investors are also big holders of GM bonds, but no group has been formed because it’s difficult to react until there is a proposal from GM, the people said.

“The complexities involved in such negotiations are far from immaterial,” Patel wrote. “But at a high level, recoveries for unsecured creditors in bankruptcy seem challenged, especially in light of likely secured government loans, suggesting many could be open to debt restructuring.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan at [e-mail]; Caroline Salas in New York at [e-mail].