Bangkok--31 Jan--Standard & Poor's
The 2011 global corporate default tally remains at one after no issuers defaulted this week, said an article published today by Standard & Poor's Global Fixed Income Research, titled "Global Corporate Default Update (Jan. 21 - 27, 2011) (Premium)." By comparison, 14 global corporate issuers defaulted at this time last year (12 U.S.-based issuers, one Australian issuer, and one Canadian issuer).
So far this year, one issuer missed a principal payment, which was among the top reasons for default last year. Of the defaults in 2010, 28 defaults resulted from missed interest or principal payments, 25 defaults resulted from Chapter 11 and foreign bankruptcy filings, 23 from distressed exchanges, three from receiverships, and one each from regulatory directives and administration.
We expect that the default rate will continue to decline this year. Our baseline projection for the U.S. corporate speculative-grade default rate in the 12 months ending in September 2011 is 2.4% (35 defaults). We believe that this likely will be close to the trough for this cycle. Our alternative forecasts are 2.0% (29 defaults) at the optimistic end and 4.5% (66 defaults) at the pessimistic end. Our pessimistic scenario is the same as the long-term (1981 to 2009) average default rate and is a slight increase from the current level.
We base our forecasts on quantitative and qualitative factors, including, but not limited to, Standard & Poor's proprietary default model for the U.S. corporate speculative-grade bond market. We update our outlook for the U.S. issuer-based corporate speculative-grade default rate each quarter after analyzing the latest economic data and expectations.
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