Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Mid-tier bonds ("Mittelstandsanleihen") in Germany

In the prevailing low interest environment in German so called Mittelstandsanleihen are being increasingly offered. Those are bonds my small/mid-tier companies, often with a well recognized name and good reputation for a narrow industry niche.
The bond volume is usually max. 60 million EUR with a coupon of 6%-8% p.a. In fact all the bonds I could have purchased since September 2012 were Mittelstandsanleihen.
I strongly discourage anyone to invest into those bonds, chances are high that at least some of the money will go for good.
The companies usually lack equity capitalization and due to the new  „Gesetz zur weiteren Erleichterung der Sanierung von Unternehmen“ (ESUG) a debt to equity swap and a higher haircut for bondholders is easier for companies to enforce. Management now has 3 months time for putting a plan together, they can also group stakeholders into different pools. The plan is accepted if the majority of pools accept it. Accordingly management has a strong incentive to balance the groups in a way that they split the votes of people that are likely to oppose the plan (such as bondholders).
For German readers i recommend this very interesting article on WiWo.

However in my opinion the prime of Mittelstandsanleihen has passed, they are under a lot of scrutiny by the media, especially by financial press. A quick internet search will find loads of bad publicity.

I receive a daily newsletter Finance Today by German paper Handelsblatt. For one whole week the newsletter featured a flashy ad for such a Mittelstandsanleihe by Gamigo.
That made me wondering if the will also feature the negative articles about the SME bonds they published online/in print in their newsletter.
Well they did (good!):

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