Emphasis placed on debt

How companies cut their debt and deleverage their balance sheets is going to be one of the major inv...

How companies cut their debt and deleverage their balance sheets is going to be one of the major investment themes over the next few years. That is the view of Paul Read, head of fixed interest retail investment at Invesco Perpetual. He feels increased debt, difficult market conditions and the bursting of the tech bubble has resulted in very difficult conditions for corporate bonds with high yield paper in particular suffering defaults. There could be one or two more big bankruptcies, he predicted. Last year 18% of all global corporate bonds where downgraded and it has been 17 consecuti...