The world's largest companies: debt could rise by up to 1 trillion dollars

With ever greater care to look, investors and supervisors on the rapidly growing corporate debt. And rightly so, as a on Monday published a study in the American asset Manager Janus Henderson shows that this year is expected to rise according to an estimate by the experts, the debt of the world's largest companies up to 1 trillion dollars. The record high borrowing is used for the management of the Corona-crisis and its consequences.

Markus Frühauf

editor in the economy.

But even before the company's liabilities were according to the study, at a record value In the past year, the liabilities of the company increased, in General, bonds and loans, about 8 percent to 8.3 trillion dollars. The debt is used not only for the financing of Acquisitions and investments, but also for share buybacks and dividends.

Alarming about the fact that the company's liabilities have risen in the past five years, significantly faster than the profits. The 900 largest companies outside the financial sector, Janus Henderson, the study has taken into account have improved since the year 2014 the operating profit by 11 percent to $ 2.7 trillion, but the net debt has risen by 37 percent. In the same period, the equity increased by more than a quarter to 14.2 trillion dollars.

back cover by Central banks

Because of the declines in profits and the uncertain prospects in the Corona-recession sucked the corporate bond market with fresh medium literally full, which was also made possible thanks to the purchases of this title by Central banks – for example, the European Central Bank (ECB) or the us Federal Reserve. Alone between January and may, the 900 companies gathered 384 billion dollars to the bond markets.

The leverage ratio, i.e. the ratio between debt and equity, climbed in 2019 to a record level of 59 percent. And despite the record low interest rates, a large proportion of the profits for the debt service went on it like never before. Nearly half of global corporate debt is eliminated, with 3.9 trillion to American companies. Germany lands in second place with $ 762 billion.

the Background are the capital-intensive auto industry, and the major financing of the automaker divisions. According to the study, Volkswagen is a debt of 192 billion dollars, the most indebted company in the world. A mountain of debt is almost as large as South Africa or Hungary, but is inflated by the auto financing division of the wolf Burger. Daimler, with 151 billion dollars in the third place, the BMW, with 114 billion dollars on the place.