IN BRIEF (Page 17)

Carlyle seeks CLO

Carlyle Group, the world's second largest private-equity firm, is raising a $500 million collateralized loan obligation to buy high-risk, high-yield debt being sold by banks at discounted prices, according to sources.

The CLO is being arranged by Deutsche Bank AG, said the sources. The fund follows a similar $450 million CLO that Carlyle and JPMorgan Chase & Co closed this month.

RBS plans fund

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the United Kingdom's second-biggest lender, plans to start a fund to transfer the risk of losses from 1.5 billion euros of high-yield loans, according to sources.

The fund will earn a return for investors by selling contracts to RBS that protect the bank from losses on 15 loans in euros and pounds and a further six in dollars, said the sources who declined to be identified.

Earnings double

Eli Lilly & Co, the world's biggest maker of psychiatric drugs, said first-quarter profit more than doubled from a year earlier, when the acquisition of the maker of the impotence drug Cialis depressed earnings.

Net income was $1.06 billion, or 97 cents a share, from $508.7 million, or 47 cents, a year earlier, the Indianapolis- based company said yesterday.

Gloomier outlook

US companies grew more pessimistic in the first quarter as the intensifying credit crisis and slump in housing weakened sales, a survey found.

A net 6 percent of firms said demand improved last quarter, down from 20 percent in the previous three months and the fewest since the 2001 recession, according to the National Association for Business Economics.

Agencies

(China Daily 04/22/2008 page17)