When banks began to scale back financing for energy companies earlier this year amid the slump in oil prices, some of Wall Street's savviest asset managers sought to capitalize by lending at high rates.
That didn't work out so well, as crude continued to plunge and lenders were stuck with losing positions. Now, banks are again contemplating credit cuts. But this time hedge funds and private-equity firms are showing more reluctance to step in.
"Those so-called lenders of last resort are not out there this time around," said John Castellano, a managing director at the consulting firm AlixPartners LLP who focuses on advising energy companies. "Many were burned and are staying away."
This wariness threatens to create a liquidity crunch for oil-and-gas drillers that have relied on relatively cheap funding for their operations.
After investors snapped up more than $37.5 billion of bonds issued by junk-rated energy companies in the first six months of 2015, just $5.9 billion has been raised since then, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. And about $1 billion of that came in the form of a distressed-debt exchange for Halcon Resources Corp., in which the owners of some of the company's beaten-down bonds agreed to swap their unsecured notes into higher-yielding and higher-ranking obligations that gave them a better claim on the company's assets.
Fundraising Halt
"Lenders are much more timid when considering new issuance as compared to earlier in the year," said David J. Karp, a partner at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP who specializes in distressed investing. "In the secondary market, there is appetite for distressed loan-to-own plays at the right levels but lenders still need to have the confidence in the driller's ability to execute."
Nonbank creditors have been fueling the energy industry's growth for some time. Investing behemoths including Oaktree Capital Group LLC, Blackstone Group LP and KKR & Co. raised more than $20 billion for investing in the sector this year. Many have paid dearly.
Blackstone's credit unit GSO Capital Partners was among the lenders that saw almost all the value of their investments in the unsecured bonds of KKR-owned Samson Resources Corp. wiped out after the unit filed for bankruptcy last week. It bought the company's unsecured bonds early in the year, hoping to orchestrate a debt exchange that would give it better claims on the assets. But the negotiations failed because the value of the assets dropped further, leaving bondholders with residual claims that were immaterial.
Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman at Blackstone, Carissa Felger, a spokeswoman for Oaktree at Sard Verbinnen & Co., and Kristi Huller of KKR declined to comment.
