Bankruptcy

US News & World Report: More Bankruptcies Coming

By Scott Riddle

Rick Newman at U.S. News and World Report believes that more big bankruptcies are coming -  Here Comes a Bankruptcy Boom. 

So far in 2008, there have been a few name-brand bankruptcies—like the recent Circuit City filing, Linens-n-Things, Frontier Airlines, and Mrs. Fields Cookies—plus the colossal liquidation of Lehman Brothers. But believe it or not, it has been a fairly calm year for bankruptcy judges, by one important measure: the corporate default rate. The share of corporate bonds in default over the past 12 months, which goes hand in hand with bankruptcies, has been about 3 percent, according to data compiled by Prof. Edward Altman of New York University's Stern School of Business. That's near the historical average. So, the vast majority of corporations have been paying their debts during the early part of this recession.

But like many good things of the past few years, that's about to end. The latest data from Altman suggest that by this time next year, the corporate default rate will be somewhere between 8.5 percent and 11.1 percent. That means there could be three to four times the number of corporate bankruptcies we've seen over the past year. And each one of those will probably involve layoffs...

Full post as published by Georgia Bankruptcy Blog on November 13, 2008 (boomark / email).