Capital MarketsTalking Shop
October 30, 2024

Talking Shop: Dialogue With IG Fixed-Income Investors, Analysts

Editor’s note: NeuGroup’s online communities provide members a forum to pose questions and give answers. Talking Shop shares valuable insights from these exchanges, anonymously. Send us your responses: [email protected]. Context: Communicating with equity investors is the primary focus for corporate investor relations (IR) teams at companies whose stock trades publicly. To address issues of concern to fixed-income investors and analysts, some corporates send representatives from treasury to accompany equity IR teams to conferences. Not many NeuGroup member companies have staff dedicated to…
Capital MarketsCash & Working Capital
October 16, 2024

Investing Cash with Liquidity Layers, Tiered Duration Structure

An enhanced cash layer helps one cash investment manager fund M&A deals while earning better returns than MMFs. A so-called enhanced cash category whose size can expand or contract like an accordion depending on anticipated outflows—including spending to finance M&A deals—is one of three layers of liquidity with differing durations described recently by a member of NeuGroup for Cash Investments at the group’s fall meeting in New York. The other two layers are operating cash and strategic cash. “We need to have…
Capital AllocationCapital Markets
September 4, 2024

M&A Drives Healthcare Firms’ Debt Targets and Liquidity Policies

NeuGroup Peer Research finds that maintaining excess debt capacity is key to funding a growth strategy dependent on acquisitions. Mergers and acquisitions and strategic investments are a driving force in how finance teams at healthcare companies develop a capital structure and determine debt targets and liquidity policies. That insight is among the key takeaways from NeuGroup’s 2024 Capital Structure Survey conducted by Senior Director of Research Joseph Bertran and sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank. As the chart below shows, maintaining excess debt capacity for potential…
Capital MarketsTechnology
August 21, 2024

An AI Tool That Yields Bond Pricing Data Without Signaling Banks

A new tool from Bondway.ai offers treasury teams an AI-driven solution for real-time bond market analytics.Treasury leaders who need quick access to up-to-date market data before launching a bond deal often rely on information provided by their bankers. Or they have to search for info themselves using solutions that may not provide the pricing insights they want. In a recent session of NeuGroup for Capital Markets, members discussed a new, AI-powered tool called Bondway.ai that some users said offers fast, accurate bond pricing…
BankingCapital Markets
July 10, 2024

How One Treasurer Got a Credit Rating Upgrade Without Asking

One NeuGroup member’s subtle but direct campaign to enable an analyst to see the necessity of an upgrade pays off. Frustration over a split credit rating prompted one treasurer to seek guidance from several bankers who said tech sector weakness, rising inflation and widespread counterparty credit risk concerns made the timing of seeking an upgrade poor. They said the company would therefore have to directly request that the rating agency raise the investment-grade credit rating one notch to the same…
Capital MarketsD&I
May 29, 2024

Bonding With Diverse-Owned Firms: Debt Deals and Stock Buybacks

A NeuGroup survey report highlights capital markets transactions where diverse-owned firms are most active. A surge in investment-grade corporate bond deals this year is good news for Wall Street underwriters—including firms whose owners are Black, Hispanic, women and veterans. A new NeuGroup Peer Research report shows that bond underwriting ranks first among the types of capital markets transactions where corporations engage with these diverse-owned firms, with 62% of respondents saying they currently use them in debt deals and another 17% considering it.…
Capital Markets
May 8, 2024

A Real Share Repurchase Alternative to ASRs and OMRs: eOMRs

Matthews South, a leading advisor on buyback programs, has developed an enhanced open market repurchase solution that gives companies a compelling option to traditional methods.Companies planning stock buybacks in 2024 and beyond may do themselves a real favor by considering a compelling alternative to standard open market repurchases (OMRs) and accelerated share repurchases (ASRs). It’s a buyback program offered by Matthews South, a capital markets advisory firm that has transformed enhanced open market repurchases (eOMRs)—which banks have offered for years—by significantly lowering…
Capital Markets
April 10, 2024

NeuGroup Members on 3 Fed Rate Cuts in 2024: Fuhgeddaboudit!

In a late March poll, Capital Markets members expected one, two or no cuts—a view increasingly held by the market. On the same day in late March that the Federal Reserve signaled it still expected to cut interest rates three times this year, almost none of the members of NeuGroup for Capital Markets polled at their spring meeting sponsored by HSBC believed that would happen. Call them prescient, perhaps: the poll came weeks before March jobs data and Wednesday’s hot inflation report pushed more investors and economists…
BankingCapital MarketsD&I
February 21, 2024

Shifting Tides: The Role of DEI Firms in Capital Markets

New NeuGroup Peer Research shows DEI firms enjoy support among corporates but face headwinds in the current ESG climate. A new NeuGroup survey reveals that 66% of corporate treasuries include diverse-owned firms in their capital markets deals, including bond underwriting, commercial paper (CP) and open market repurchase (OMR) programs. The survey, conducted in collaboration with Sustainable Fitch and the National Association of Securities Professionals (NASP) in December 2023, explored the level of engagement between treasury and diverse-owned firms.Shifting winds. NeuGroup members who responded to the survey cited…
Capital MarketsFX
January 10, 2024

Designing a Net Investment Hedging Program That Makes Sense

How one NeuGroup member company tackled hedging net investments denominated in foreign currencies.The process of preparing to launch a net investment hedging (NIH) program to manage risk requires assessing necessity and exposure, a determination of hedge accounting capacity, deciding between instrument alternatives, and early, effective communication between treasury, tax, outside auditors and other stakeholders. Those insights emerged from a member presentation at the fall meeting of NeuGroup for Mega-Cap Assistant Treasurers. The NIH process followed by the presenting member’s company may…