Sharpest One Month Decline in Corporate Credit Quality Since 1990

Kamakura Corporation announced Monday that the Kamakura index of troubled public companies deteriorated in October at the sharpest rate since the index began in January 1990.

The Kamakura global index of troubled companies jumped by a record 5.6% from 16.4% of the public company universe to 22.0% of the universe in October.  This is the highest level reached by the index since January 2003, and it comes close to the 28% all time high in the index, recorded in September 2001.

The Kamakura index has now shown declines in credit quality in 14 of the last 15 months.  At the 22.0% level, the index shows that credit conditions are better than only 8.1% of the monthly periods since the start of the index in January, 1990. The all-time low in the index was 5.4%, recorded in April and May, 2006.  Kamakura defines a troubled company as a company whose short term default probability is in excess of 1%. The index covers more than 21,000 public companies in 30 countries using the fourth generation version of Kamakura's advanced credit models.

"The wide-spread recognition that a severe recession is underway affected the corporate universe across the board,” said Warren Sherman, Kamakura President and Chief Operating Officer. "Among rated public companies, Anglo Irish Bank Corporation, Bank of Ireland, Citadel Broadcasting Corporation, and Thomson (of France) showed the greatest rise in short term default probabilities during October. In October, the percentage of the global corporate universe with default probabilities between 1% and 5% increased very dramatically by 2.3% to 13.2%. The percentage of companies with default probabilities between 5% and 10% was up 1.6% to 4.2% of the universe in October.  The percentage of the universe with default probabilities between 10 and 20% rose sharply by 1.2% to 2.8% of the universe.  The percentage of companies with default probabilities over 20% was up 0.8% to 2.0% of the total universe in October."

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