BAA: brother, can you spare a dime?

As anyone who watches daytime TV will know, debt refinancing is big business. There are millions of companies out there who will loan you money to pay off your existing debts, hiking up the interest rate as they go. Normally it's cash-strapped homeowners with their lives in hock who these loan sharks target, but now it's BAA's turn to suffer as it tries to persuade someone to lend it lots and lots of money.

Financial pundits from investment houses and other rarefied places speculate as to whether the owner of 7 of the UK's airports has any chance of sorting out its debts. Ferrovial took on £10 billion worth of debt to buy BAA last year, and now those money turkeys are coming home to roost. Going cap in hand to its shareholders raised £500 million (far more than Plane Stupid could raise, I assure you!) but even that can't save the ailing company. Now hacks are speculating that if BAA cannot sort its finances out in the next two months, bondholders will be able to take their £3 billion investment back, potentially bankrupting the company.

Amusingly the credit crunch is now being blamed for BAA's problems. Seems there's nothing we can't blame on those irresponsible sub-prime lenders, eh?