Aston Martin, the UK carmaker beloved of fictional spy James Bond, was a £4bn company with little debt when it went public in 2018. Now it's a £350mn company with more than four times that in net borrowings. Interest expenses consumed almost all of last year's ebitda.

Last month, Aston Martin borrowed up to £550mn from new lenders led by BlackRock subsidiary HPS by moving assets into a newly formed subsidiary. Collateral existing bondholders thought backed their claims is now out of reach. This isn't supposed to happen after the famous J Crew case roughly a decade ago. Bond documents commonly include "J Crew blockers" limiting companies' ability to move collateral into unrestricted shells, but Aston Martin's blocker wouldn't restrict moving intellectual property into a "non-guarantor restricted subsidiary".

Bondholders have threatened legal action; S&P reckons they'd get back just 25 per cent of their investment absent relocated assets. The rise of J Crew blockers is accompanied by generous exceptions: European bond agreements allowed transfers worth about 60 per cent of ebitda in 2020, rising to roughly 100 per cent by 2025. Complexity adds risk. Lenders will see this as a cautionary tale.