IT WAS ALWAYS going to take something special to make the WorldCom debacle look a little insignificant. The Standard & Poor’s corporate auto ratings team managed it on May 5 when they announced a downgrade of Ford Motor Company by one notch to BB+ and General Motors by two notches to BB with a negative watch, turning both into high-yield credits. The downgrades hit nearly $90 billion of index-eligible debt. That’s almost three times the $30 billion affected by the WorldCom downgrade in 2002.
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