How Bad Is It? The Tale of Sisyphus and Leveraged Loans

There are few tasks in the world of finance more thankless than trying to find buyers to invest in debt from leveraged buyouts.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, like Sisyphus, seem cursed to push their huge boulder of loan commitments uphill, only to watch it roll down again. The four investment banks have sold down 27% of their exposure to leveraged loans in the first quarter, which leaves about $85.6 billion of what Wall Street calls hung bridges, or orphaned loans