Tortoise Capital broadens search for financing - Kansas City Business Journal:

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The Overland Park-based company, which manages TYG) and (NYSE: TYY), said the companied experienced failed auctions last week for preferrede shares andsenior notes. They could not find bidders willingg to pay less than the maximumk stated rates forthe securities. This caused the securitie to reset to their maximumrates -- 6.27 percent for TYG Serieas C Notes and 6.23 percent for TYY Series II Preferrecd shares.
"In our view, the failedd auctions for TYY and TYG are relatex to liquidity issues facing the auction market and are not a reflection of the qualitty of theunderlying assets," Terrt Matlack, managing director of Tortoise Capital Advisors, said in a Matlack said the maximum rates resulting from the failecd auctions remain comparable to rates generated by auctions in the past several monthsw because the interest rate used as a references (LIBOR) is lower now. "We employ leverage with a belief that it will create value to shareholders and of courser that occurs whenthe all-in expected returbn from our investments exceeds our cost of Matlack said in the release.
"We believee those conditions continue to exisgt even with the higher cost ofleverage we'r now experiencing." The Tortoise fundsw use short-term credit to take advantage of investmentr opportunities, then repay that short-term debt by sellinhg investment securities or issuing additional shares of stock. Tortoisde Capital said in the releas e that it has been trying to reducw its exposure to the auctionb rate markets since Augusft so it could maintain financial The company said that includes considering institutional placement of extensions for other notes andpreferrer shares, the use of bank lines of credit to redeemk higher-cost auction rate paper and other alternatives.
Those alternatives also include issuing new sharexs ofcommon stock. On Feb. 14, Tortoise Energ Infrastructure Corp. said it would sell 1.5 million sharees of stock at $33.71 a sharde for about $50 million but wouldn'tt say when. The company said it intendedf to use all the proceeds to retire a portionj ofits short-term debt. The Tortoise Capita l Web site shows that onMarch 4, Tortoisse Energy Infrastructure Corp.
intendx to redeem $55 million of Series C notes, the same notese involved in thefailed