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Comment: ASOS, SSP and WHSmith deals show the City is saving those who deserve rescuing

Chloe and Naomi wear ASOS' snowrange: Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd
Chloe and Naomi wear ASOS' snowrange: Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

It’s easy to attack bankers, but it does get a bit boring after a while.

So let’s celebrate the ones at JPMorgan, Numis, Barclays and HSBC who rescued hundreds more jobs today at Asos by getting shareholders to stump up £247 million of emergency funds to see them through the crisis.

In an echo of the WHSmith and SSP fundraisers before it, lenders had to be convinced the fashion website was worthy of more overdraft headroom money before the advisers could tap up shareholders.

The company is also in talks to access the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility. That's the one for bigger companies which uses commercial paper to bring in debt funding. By all accounts, it is finally running more smoothly after a rocky start from overly-pernickety Treasury officials.

In short, the Asos deal has been complex, made far more difficult to arrange by everybody involved working from home and the ever-present factor of key people being off sick.

Regulators' moves to simplify the paperwork for equity raises today will no doubt be welcomed in the light of all that.

What’s good about this Asos deal is that it shows shareholders are keen to put their hands in their pockets for management teams and companies who have rewarded them in the past.

Asos, for early investors in particular, has done that in spades, albeit the last couple of years have been disappointing.

However, shareholders are only prepared to back the companies which really need it.

Given how battered their portfolios have been by the market meltdown, while they do have cash on hand, they are not prepared to spray it around.

They want to know from management: have you done absolutely everything to get your costs down and operations ready for the next 18 months?

Have you exhausted every other avenue in the debt markets?

Most importantly, is there a fundamentally great business here that’s worth saving and will repay our loyalty with a sharp and healthy bounceback after the short term crisis passes?

There are some grumbles around last week’s fundraisers at Auto Trader and Hays. Shareholders weren’t, it seems, braced for the cash call when it came.

Some are not entirely convinced they really needed the money. Sure, times are tough for anyone serving the car industry or recruiting staff, but no worse than for anyone else.

SSP and WHSmith, as airport and train station retailers, are in the worst short-term market positions you can imagine. Their eligibility for shareholder help was far clearer.

Likewise Asos, which has seen demand for going-out clothes temporarily collapse as its customers are shut up in their bedrooms.

All three businesses should see a healthy pick-up when the health crisis has run its course.

The Asos offer was apparently more than four-times oversubscribed.

For the best companies, who really need it, shareholders will be there for you. Just don't take them for granted.