The Corporate Bond Market: Binge-Borrowing

Celery and raspberry? Marathon miles of Sudoku and crossword puzzles? Extra reps at the gym? Binge away.

‘Tis the season after the season, that other most wonderful time of the year when it’s a challenge to get a machine at the gym and resolutions are resolute, at least until February or a more intriguing deal comes along. What better way to make amends for that huge holiday hangover that crescendos with so many a New Year’s Eve bash?

Some of us chose to ring in 2017 in a substantially more subdued manner that nevertheless entailed binging of a decidedly different derivation. Enter Netflix. Yours truly must confess that closet claustrophobia was the culprit in keeping this one indoors coveting the control, confining the choices to richly royal romps. It all started innocently enough, with a recommendation to catch The Crown, which has just won a Golden Globe. The devolution that followed began in Italy, with Medici, stopped over in France, with Versailles, and round tripped back to England, with the epic saga that kicked off the modern day, small screen genre, The Tudors. At some point hallucinations began to give the impression that all the series’ stars had British accents. Wait, they actually did.

Thankfully, at some point, bowl games snapped the spell and reality rudely reared its redemptive head before anyone’s else’s head rolled (those royals were a bloodthirsty lot!). Sleep and sanity followed.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of borrowers of almost every stripe these days. For those tapping the fixed income markets, the borrowing binge fest is conspicuous in its constancy. Not only did global bond issuance top $6.6 trillion last year, a fresh record, sales are off to a galloping start thus far in January.

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