Jim Chanos, one of Wall Street’s best-known short sellers, has sounded the alarm on the private debt boom, telling the Financial Times that First Brands Group’s chaotic bankruptcy could augur a wave of corporate collapses.
Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are facing the prospect of multibillion-dollar losses from the bankruptcy of First Brands, a heavily indebted maker of spark plugs and windscreen wipers based in Ohio.
First Brands has now disclosed almost $12bn in debt and off-balance sheet financing built up in the years before its Sunday bankruptcy filing, which also ensnared less well-known private lenders such as a Utah-based leasing specialist.