My friends in the corporate restructuring industry aren’t breaking out the bubbly just yet. But with one eye, they’re gazing wistfully into the distant horizon where they’re seeing the first signs of a glimmer of hope. And with the other eye, they’re gazing at the screens of their smartphones and computers where they’re seeing a brutal junk bond rout.
Junk bonds had a phenomenal run. With each truckload of free money that the Fed and other central banks delivered to the markets, junk-bond valuations soared and yields plunged. The St. Louis Fed’s BofA Merrill Lynch junk-bond yield index, which was deep into the double digits during the financial crisis, hit a low on May 9 of 5.24%, down from 6.19% at the start of the year. Yields on some of the least bad junk in the index were well below 5%.
Before these crazy times that the financial crisis brought, you could buy an essentially risk-free 1-year FDIC-insured CD with an interest rate of 5%. But recently, desperate investors, mauled by the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy and losing ground to inflation, were furiously grabbing yield wherever they could, taking on risks no questions asked, any risks no matter how large, to get to that 5% yield. A feeding frenzy for junk. Companies took advantage of this Fed-induced desperation and bamboozled investors into gobbling up $187 billion in junk bonds so far in 2013, a record!
One of the losers of the Fed’s policies was the corporate restructuring industry. With endless amounts of nearly free money available, even teetering companies with too much debt and money-losing operations could borrow more to cover up any holes. So my friends and their restructuring outfits branched out into performance-improvement consulting and financial advisory, and some have left the business altogether.
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