A reckoning has begun for corporate debt monsters
As rates rise, how messy will the squeeze on business get?
When investment bankers agreed in January to underwrite the leveraged buy-out of Citrix, a software company, by a group of private-equity firms, returns on safe assets like government bonds were piffling. Yield-hungry investors were desperate to get their hands on any meaningful return, which the $16.5bn Citrix deal promised. Lenders including Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs were happy to dole out $15bn to finance the transaction. Inflation would pass, central bankers insisted. Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine, energy markets were placid and the world’s economies were growing.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Debt, denial and deleveraging”
Business October 1st 2022
- A reckoning has begun for corporate debt monsters
- What Italian business makes of Giorgia Meloni
- Unilever’s problems will not go away with its boss
- Why some chipmakers are hurting much more than others
- Matrimony is one of India’s biggest businesses
- The deadly sins and the workplace
- Can Larry Fink survive the ESG culture wars?
From the October 1st 2022 edition
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