The indexes typically rise as investor confidence deteriorates and fall as it improves. Credit swaps pay the buyer face value if a borrower fails to meet its obligations, less the value of the defaulted debt. A basis point equals $1,000 annually on a contract protecting $10 million of debt.
Markets in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore are closed today for a public holiday.
The U.S. two-year interest-rate swap spread, a measure of debt-market stress, rose 0.88 basis point to 29.19 basis points, the highest level since Feb. 27. The gauge, which has climbed from an almost eight-month low on March 28, widens when investors seek the perceived safety of government securities and narrows when they favor assets such as corporate bonds.
Bonds of Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co., the world's largest maker of jet engines, were the most actively traded U.S. corporate securities by dealers yesterday, with 123 trades of $1 million or more, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Bon-Ton's $480 million of 10.25 percent notes due March 2014 fell 2.25 cents to 85.75 cents on the dollar to yield 19.4 percent, Trace data show. That's the biggest drop since Jan. 13.
Comparable-store sales for the five weeks ended March 31 fell 0.1 percent to $254.1 million, compared with $254.5 million in the same period last year, York, Pennsylvania-based Bon-Ton said yesterday in a statement. The figure came in below the 1.7 percent average projection from analysts surveyed by researcher Retail Metrics Inc.
The Standard & Poor's/LSTA U.S. Leveraged Loan 100 index fell for the first time in four days to a more than three-week low, declining 0.05 cent to 93.6 cents on the dollar. The measure, which tracks the 100 largest dollar-denominated first- lien leveraged loans, has returned 4.3 percent this year.
Leveraged loans and high-yield bonds are rated below Baa3 by Moody's Investors Service and lower than BBB- by S&P.
Wendy's, the second-largest U.S. hamburger chain, is seeking its term loan B to refinance debt, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction. The Dublin, Ohio-based fast food company's debt, due in seven years, will pay 3.5 percentage points to 3.75 percentage points more than the London interbank offered rate, said the person, who declined to be identified because the terms are private.
Libor, a rate banks say they can borrow in dollars from each other that acts as a benchmark for about $360 trillion of financial instruments worldwide, will have a 1.25 percent floor. Wendy's is proposing to sell the loan at 99 cents on the dollar, the person said, reducing proceeds for the company and boosting the yield to investors.