Borrowers are paying hundreds of basis points higher for high-yield loans.
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San Francisco
March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., the bond broker that started an investment banking business last year, plans to hire at least nine staff for its debt advisory unit in London amid predictions bank lending will remain subdued.
Cantor is seeking at least five people for debt origination, and four for loan sales, trading, and research, said Michael Johnson, head of European leveraged capital markets in London. Cantor currently has nine people in the debt team.
New York-based Cantor is taking advantage of a slowdown in bank lending to win fees by arranging financing for high-yield, or leveraged, borrowers. Banks worldwide have curbed lending as they try to recover from $1.7 trillion of writedowns and losses from the credit crisis, and as global regulators tighten rules on lenders' capital requirements.
