Pressure on global corporate credit ratings is at the worst level since the financial crisis, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has warned.
In a report on Tuesday, the ratings agency said that 17 percent of debt-issuing companies were on “negative credit watch” at the end of 2015, meaning they had a 50 percent chance of being downgraded within the next three months. This outnumbered the number of companies on “positive credit watch” by a ratio of three-to-one.
This meant that negative outlooks on global companies exceeded positive ones by the worst margin —11 percent — since 2008-09, S&P said.
