Panterra Funding, an ABCP with a good deal of exposure to emerging markets, has ceased issuance and repaid all its paper as of the end of November, Moody's Investors Service said in a brief statement.
Moody's had rated it Prime-1', and Fitch Ratings, F1.'
Administered by Citicorp North America, Panterra had $2.4 billion of outstanding commercial paper at the end of September. The conduit was backed by 18 transactions and had asset commitments of $3.6 billion at the end of July. At least through mid summer, the majority of the deals were from emerging markets, and within that category, the bulk were financial future flows - namely, diversified payment rights (DPR) (ASR, 7/30/07).
A Citibank source declined to comment.
The only other ABCP known for its exposure to EM structured deals is Orchid Funding, administered by ABN AMRO. Sources close to Orchid said the conduit was still functioning. One market source said that ABN was understood to have dropped a portion of a recent $750 million DPR transaction from Kazakhstan's Bank TuranAlem (BTA) into Orchid. ABN officials have said Orchid also serves as a warehousing facility and can be used to fund assets in emerging-market currencies as well as dollars, with currency hedging built into the programs structure. ABN recently closed a $200 million mortgage facility for a unit of BTA. The facility was open to funding loans in either dollars or tenge.
ABN officials couldn't be reached for comment.
At the end of September 2007, the CP outstanding of Orchid totaled $963.7 million backed by 12 transactions. In May Orchid had $2.27 billion of CP.
While Panterra's withdrawal from the EM market is likely to further disappoint market-challenged arrangers and originators of EM future flows, there was a drop of good news last week for at least one player in the sector. Moody's upgraded the Series 2006-A loan for ATF Bank arranged by WestLB in April 2006. The $100 million transaction, backed by DPRs, was bumped up to Baa2' from Baa3' following the agency's upgrade of ATF's unsecured debt a few weeks back.
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