Business news with words debt+markets. 60 or more news.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Single-family home builder M/I Homes Inc. said on Monday it has sold land in its Florida markets to help reduce debt, and is exiting the West Palm Beach market, where its assets included about 500 lots in four communities.

BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- M/I Homes Inc. Monday said it has sold land located primarily in Florida to various buyers for $82 million and that it is exiting the West Palm Beach housing market. The home builder said as a result of the lot sales, it will book pretax land impairment charges of about $80 million in the fourth quarter, and expects to see a $50 million cash tax refund in the second quarter of 2008. M/I Homes said it is "likely" that further impairment charges will be recorded in the fourth quarter. The company said the land sold represented 3,700 lots; at the end of the third quarter, it owned 16,767 lots. "Today's announcement supports and advances our strategic objectives of strengthening our balance sheet, reducing our debt, reducing operating costs, and focusing on markets where we believe we have the best opportunity for acceptable and consistent returns," said Chief Executive Robert Schottenstein in a statement.

After CDOs and SIVs come CDSs IF NOTHING else, 2007 has enriched the vocabulary of international investors. Think back 12 months; how many people knew what subprime loans were, or what CDOs and SIVs stood for? (For those who are still baffled, they are Collateralised Debt Obligations and Structured Investment Vehicles.) The lesson of the year, in retrospect, was that our complex, interlinked global financial system has its drawbacks. Risk was dispersed, and that was assumed to be a good thing. To some extent, it still is. But dispersion makes it hard to tell where risk resides. In many cases, as has been made clear, risk has come back to haunt the banking system. And bank failures are a huge risk for any economy, no matter how advanced. ...

Borrowing costs for banks fell for the second week running after co-ordinated central bank action helped unfreeze the money markets. But the credit crunch continued to take its toll as banks offered big discounts to offload leveraged debt.

Goldman Sachs took the knife to its Wall Street rivals yesterday, predicting that the credit crunch would force Citigroup to slash its dividend by 40 per cent. At the same time it emerged that Merrill Lynch was preparing to cut 1,600 jobs from its trading desks. William Tanona, a leading Goldman Sachs analyst, said that Citigroup, the world’s largest bank, would have to cut its payout to shareholders to preserve its capital position and write off $18 billion ($£9 billion) of assets in the fourth quarter, compared with earlier estimates of $11 billion. Goldman said that Citigroup would need fresh capital of between $5 billion and $10 billion in addition to a recent $7.5 billion commitment from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Under that deal, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund is protected from a possible dividend cut, as it bought Citigroup bonds convertible into stock. The bonds, which will vest into a 5 per cent shareholding on conversion, pay an annual coupon of 11 per cent, compared with the existing dividend yield for shareholders of 7.3 per cent. Citigroup$’s largest shareholders include Capital Research & Management, with 4.6 per cent, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who controls 3.97 per cent, and Barclays Global Investors, with 3.76 per cent. Mr Tanona said that he had raised his loss estimates for Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan and forecast that, combined with Citigroup, the three will have chalked up $33.6 billion of writedowns in the fourth quarter. Goldman said it now forecast that Merrill and JPMorgan would record increased writedowns of $11.5 billion and $3.4 billion respectively $– up from $6 billion and $1.7 billion. Most of the writedowns are linked to the banks$’ exposure to collateralised debt obligations, special debt instruments that were invested in risky assets, such as US sub-prime mortgages. Mr Tanona said: “We still believe it will be a couple of quarters before the current credit crisis is fully digested by the markets.”

CITIGROUP Inc, the biggest US bank, may cut its dividend by 40 percent to preserve capital and write down more fixed income securities than it has told investors to expect, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The New York bank may write off US$18.7 billion in collateralized debt obligations such as subprime mortgages, up from its November 4 estimate of as much as US$11 billion, Goldman's William F. Tanona wrote in a note on Wednesday. Citigroup, which paid out 54 cents each quarter this year, will have to raise US$6.2 billion in extra capital to reach its target, they wrote. "It will be a couple of quarters before the current credit crisis is fully digested by the markets," wrote Tanona, who has a "sell" rating on the stock. "Given the magnitude of the writedowns we assume and Citi's remaining exposure, we believe the firm has a serious need to preserve or raise additional capital." Chief Executive Officer Charles O. "Chuck" Prince III

Hotel operator Lodgian suspended talks to sell the company, citing turmoil in the debt and credit markets, and said it is stepping up efforts to sell less-profitable hotels.

The Federal Reserve Board's clout isn't what it was during Alan Greenspan's glory days. Back then, the Fed looked and acted all-powerful (even though it wasn't). Now it's visibly failing to unfreeze key debt markets in which giant institutions lend to each other. Those markets have frozen out of...

An agreement has been reached on the sale of Cheyne Finance, a structured investment vehicle now known as S.I.V. Portfolio, to bidders including Goldman Sachs, the fund’s receivers, Deloitte & Touche said. The $7 billion S.I.V. Portfolio, managed by the hedge fund Cheyne Capital Management, went into receivership in September. The agreement comes after talks with a number of bidders over the last few weeks and consultation with the informal creditors’ committees, Deloitte said. Under the deal, certain reinvestment opportunities will be offered to some existing creditors of the company. S.I.V.’s, held by banks, hedge funds or other institutions, issue a mixture of short-term debt and capital and buy longer-term assets, which may pay more interest than the amount they pay on their notes. The vehicles encountered trouble in August when liquidity in the credit markets dried up as investors faced exposure to the subprime market.

UK house prices fell the most in three years in December and the threat of more declines may cause the property market to seize up in 2008, Hometrack Ltd said. The average cost of a home in England and Wales slipped for a third month, dropping 0.3 percent to 175,200 pounds ($347,877), the London-based research group said yesterday. The number of property transactions will fall 17 percent and prices will rise just one percent next year, Hometrack forecast. Bank of England policy makers said this month that a drop in house prices seemed "more pronounced" than expected as they cut their benchmark interest rate for the first time in two years. Record debt, higher mortgage costs and the property market's worst performance since 1995 have discouraged homebuyers. "The second half of the year has seen a major reversal in confidence," Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said in a statement. "Just as the financial markets have faced a liquidity

CITIGROUP Inc, Bank of America Corp, and JPMorgan Chase & Co have abandoned a United States Treasury-sponsored plan to buy assets from cash-strapped structured investment vehicles. The "SuperSiv" fund brokered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, said to be about US$80 billion when it was announced in October, "is not needed at this time," the banks said. The need for a bailout has diminished as HSBC Holdings Plc, bond insurer MBIA Inc and other companies that manage SIVs arranged their own rescues. The steps lessened the threat that SIVs would dump their holdings and further affect credit markets suffering from losses in securities tied to subprime mortgages. New York's Citigroup said last week it would guarantee US$58 billion in debt from SIVs it manages in order to avoid a sale of the assets, Bloomberg News reported. More than 20 banks, SIVs and investment managers participated in the discussion with BlackRock Inc the adviser, the statement said. The banks

The financial crisis that has gripped markets since the summer has left most in the City agreeing that 2007 will go down as the high watermark of an era of cheap credit and complex debt instruments, a new survey shows.

STOCKS jumped yesterday following a better-than-expected rise in profits at Research in Motion Ltd. and on word that Merrill Lynch may have lined up a big cash infusion from a Singapore fund. The Dow Jones industrial average capped a volatile week with a gain of more than 200 points and, along with the other major indexes, posted an increase of more than 1.5 percent. The developments seemed to allay investor fears that economic growth would succumb to tightness in the credit markets. Adding to the measure of relief some investors felt, the Federal Reserve said it would continue with its special biweekly auctions for banks as long as necessary to relieve strains in the short-term debt market. The announcements came as the New York Stock Exchange set a record for volume in the first half hour and hour of trading during what is known as "quadruple witching." It marks the simultaneous expiration of contracts for stock index futures, stock index options, stock options

LEHMAN Brothers Holdings Inc, the largest US underwriter of mortgage-backed bonds, faces legal action by Australian municipal governments after the value of their subprime-related investments dropped as much as 86 percent. Wingecarribee Shire Council, in the Southern Highlands in New South Wales, is suing Lehman for "deceptive and misleading conduct" in selling A$3 million (US$2.6 million) of subprime-linked collateralized debt obligations, the council's managing director Mike Hyde said in a media statement yesterday. New York-based Lehman, which manages up to A$1 billion on behalf of 35 councils in New South Wales and Western Australia, may face further action as the assets in its US mortgage-linked product have declined amid a shakeout in global credit markets, Bloomberg News said. "We strongly deny the claims made in the press statement that we have not acted in their best interests, or that we have engaged in any misleading or deceptive conduct," Sinead

Emerging nations --Brazil, Russia, India and China -- have raised $131.1 billion from the debt markets in the year so far, while India's share stands at just over one-sixth of the kitty. BRIC countries raised the funds through debt markets in a total of 606 deals in 2007 so far, against $120 billion mopped via 736 deals in the year-ago period, according to data complied by global consulting firm Dealogic.

The Federal Reserve Board's clout isn't what it was during Alan Greenspan's day. Back then the Fed looked and acted all-powerful (even though in the real world it wasn't). Now it's visibly failing to unfreeze key debt markets in which giant institutions lend to each other. Those markets have frozen out of fear - no one knows what hidden toxic time bombs are on other firms' balance sheets, or even on their own. The Fed hasn't been able to thaw the markets with interest rate cuts or by using its "discount window," and has been reduced to trying to bribe and cajole big players into borrowing from it as a substitute for borrowing from each other. Comedown City.

The devastating credit squeeze that has been gumming up the interbank and commercial paper loan markets for months shows few signs of letting up, writes Mark Fisch and Benn Steil

The Federal Reserve Board's clout isn't what it was during Alan Greenspan's day. Back then the Fed looked and acted all-powerful (even though in the real world it wasn't). Now it's visibly failing to unfreeze key debt markets in which giant institutions lend to each other. Those markets have frozen out of fear - no one knows what hidden toxic time bombs are on other firms' balance sheets, or even on their own. The Fed hasn't been able to thaw the markets with interest rate cuts or by using its "discount window," and has been reduced to trying to bribe and cajole big players into borrowing from it as a substitute for borrowing from each other. Comedown City.

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of newspaper publisher and broadcaster Tribune Co. were down nearly 6% at $31.40 in Wednesday morning trading after a published report indicated that real estate mogul Sam Zell's $8.2 billion deal to take the company private could be in jeopardy. According to a story in the Chicago Tribune, certain bankers are hesitant to fund the last portion of the transaction on worries that weakening credit markets will prevent them from selling the remaining $4.2 billion in loans and bonds to debt investors. Tribune's weak revenue results over the last several months, indicative of the difficulty facing the entire newspaper industry, only makes the situation worse, the report said. The transaction had been expected to close on Thursday. A Tribune spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Late Tuesday, Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Paul Ginocchio downgraded Tribune stock to hold from buy, saying that the current stock price "leaves limited upside." He said in the "remote chance" that the deal does not close, the shares could plunge to around $15.

Big donors are betting on Africa's private sector to improve health IS THIS privatisation through the back door? That is a question sure to come up about the $1 billion health-care strategy for Africa unveiled on December 17th by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World Bank. The IFC plans to set up an equity investment fund, ultimately worth up to $500m, including money from other donors, to invest in small and medium-sized enterprises in the health-care industry. It also wants to create a $400m-500m debt vehicle that will fund local banks that lend to such entrepreneurs. ...