CIT Bondholders Leading Last Minute "Rescue"; Would Buy Breathing Room

This basically looks like CIT bondholders (led by PIMCO) are willing to gamble that this "injection" will make CIT more regulator friendly and perhaps get them better options from the FDIC. Structured as a high interest rate bridge that buys CIT some time to undertake a series of exchange offers. This alone wouldn't fix their liquidity problem, but would give them breathing room. If this deal were to happen, our view is that at best it most likely postpones the inevitable. In any case, CIT has no balance sheet flexibility to make new loans right now as all new capital is desperately needed to pay off existing creditors. In fact, it has every incentive to be incredibly aggessive with existing borrowers in order to recover as much cash now as possible. As such, from a systemic standpoint, CIT is as good as dead already...

Highlights from the WSJ follow:

CIT Group Inc. was close to securing $3 billion in last-minute rescue financing from its bondholders Sunday in a deal that should keep the struggling firm -- once the largest issuer of small-business loans in the U.S. -- out of bankruptcy court, people familiar with the matter say.

The deal, which was being considered by CIT's board Sunday night, charges CIT very high interest rates, and it doesn't permanently fix the company's long-term financing needs, say people involved in the transaction. But it buys time for the lender to restructure itself, and minimizes bondholders' losses. Bondholders calculated they would lose more if CIT filed for bankruptcy and sold assets at fire-sale prices than if they offered the rescue.
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If the deal is completed, it could help reduce CIT's debt load, strengthen its capital position and alleviate pressure on CIT to pay down $1 billion in debt that comes due in August. It may also preserve the U.S. Treasury's $2.33 billion investment made as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
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Still, CIT and its bondholders hope that their effort to stabilize the company will cause bank regulators to look more favorably on a CIT plan to transfer more of its loans from the holding company to its bank in Utah. CIT has trouble borrowing money, but its bank can finance itself by taking in deposits. To transfer more assets to the bank, however, CIT needs an exemption from the Federal Reserve and a nod from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
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Under the proposal, CIT would likely pay interest rates 10 percentage points above the London interbank offered rate, said these people. (As of Friday, three-month Libor stood around 0.5%.) CIT has also agreed to pledge some of its highest-quality loans as collateral on the $3 billion package.

The new loan could act like a "bridge" to a series of debt-exchange offers that CIT would launch in order to get bondholders to swap some of their bonds for equity in the company or for new debt that matures later.
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At least one analyst viewed the deal as a stopgap measure. "Even if they put together a deal today and postpone a bankruptcy filing, CIT may be back in the same place in the not-too-distant future because unemployment rates, business-loan delinquencies and corporate default rates are climbing," said Martin Weiss, president of Weiss Research, an investment consulting firm in Jupiter, Fla. "The outlook for the next six months looks pretty rough for many banks, including CIT," he said.

Late Thursday night, CIT officials believed they had secured a $2 billion rescue-financing plan from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. But that fell through by Friday morning, said these people.

J.P. Morgan would have considered lending if CIT were first to seek bankruptcy protection, but the bank "couldn't get comfortable with a deal outside (bankruptcy) court," said one person familiar with the matter.