The issuance of international bond debt, aka high yield notes, has been a very popular financing option for French companies for the last few years, whether it was to finance their industrial investments or to fund an LBO transaction.

Parent company guarantees and performance bonds are typically used in the construction and engineering industries to provide a developer with some security in the event that the contractor breaches the building or engineering contract or, in some circumstances, upon the contractor's insolvency.

In the current economic climate, contractor default is, unfortunately, even more prevalent in the construction and engineering industries, and so the issues surrounding parent company guarantees and performance bonds are very much in focus for developers.