One hundred companies were forced to undertake debt exchanges last year. Given the scale of the bank liquidity crisis, and the doom-laden default predictions that were made at the end of 2008, that figure might seem to be relatively low. Indeed, although distressed exchanges accounted for roughly 35% of total global defaults in 2009 most of them took place in the first half of the year. The sharp improvement in sentiment in mid-2009 enabled the pace of exchanges to slow dramatically....
