FT: the AirTanker bond issue has, not surprisingly, gone pear-shaped as the monoline insurers fall apart. The story includes some vital detail on precisely what the Defence Procurement PFI team and the consortium have been doing all this time; essentially, trying to finance the deal at an acceptable rate of interest in the middle of a credit crunch. The alternative plan, to issue bonds, is now dead, so it’s back to the banks.
Meanwhile, the VC-10 fleet soldiers on; better hope the cracks aren’t serious. (This should be an unintended benefit of the credit crisis; silly PFI deals will be really, really difficult to get away for some time to come.)
silly PFI deals will be really, really difficult to get away for some time to come
would that it were so – since PFI deals benefit from a de facto government guarantee and are in general collateralised against big and valuable assets, they’re quite likely to be the only deals that will get away, sucking up capital from anything else.