Moody's Investors Service said that the number of U.S. companies with a speculative-grade rating of B3 or lower has hit a new low for the year as credit-market access improves, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. The credit rater said that it has 152 companies on its B3 negative and lower corporate ratings list, down 15 percent from 179 at the beginning of 2012. The decline supports Moody's expectation that the U.S. speculative-grade default rate will drop to 2.5 percent by mid-2013 from the current rate of 3.1 percent. Moody's said that high-yield debt issuance has been extremely strong in 2012 as investors chase higher returns in a low-interest rate environment.
