Ira Rennert - Junk Bond Financing

Junk Bond Financing

Milken—as a bond trader for Drexel Burnham Lambert—was successful selling high-risk, high-yield bonds issued by struggling or undercapitalized companies. Before Milken, these were considered ‘junk’ and most investors avoided them, but it was Milken’s innovation that formed a strategy of using these junk bonds to provide capital for corporate raiders to conduct hostile company takeovers. Integrated Resources raised $2 billion in junk bonds financed by Milken but ultimately collapsed amid scandal and defaulted on $1 billion of bond debt in May 1989 (c.f. the 1991 book Den of Thieves about the junk bond scandal). As an outside board member, Rennert was not dragged down by the collapse and began to raise junk bonds on his own behalf to finance acquisitions for Renco.

Rennert's strategy for building Renco was to acquiring all the shares of struggling companies and to finance the acquisition by issuing junk bonds. Along the way, Rennert paid substantial dividends out of the business to himself. In a series of junk bond issues since 1995, Renco’s subsidiaries have borrowed an estimated $1.1 billion and transferred $322 million (29 percent) to Renco Group, according to documents filed with the SEC. Backed by blue-chip mutual funds and hedge funds such as John Hancock Funds LLC and Putnam Investment Management LLC, Rennert now didn’t have to invest much of his own money. His purchase of AM General in 1992 was bought with a down payment of just $10 million. In 1994, Fluor Corp. of Los Angeles sold Doe Run to Renco, with the latter paying $52 million in cash, and approximately $60 million in debt payable over an eight-year period. In 1997, Doe Run went on to pay $247 million for a similarly environmentally troubled lead smelting complex from the Peruvian government, as well as borrowing more money to service its Fluor debt. And in 1998, Doe Run sold $305 million in junk bonds for financing its Peruvian acquisition as well as more lead mines in Missouri (according to Doe Run filings with the SEC). Since 1998 most Renco financings have been bank debt.