Many businesses drew down their lines of credit in the early days of the pandemic to shore up liquidity and prepare for a potential market collapse. Now, a few months later, they are paying back the billions in such emergency funds they borrowed, as sweeping interventions by the Federal Reserve opened up cheap access to capital markets and offered companies a chance to bolster their financial flexibility, the Wall Street Journal reported. Companies raised over $900 billion in capital through U.S. bond sales between April 1 and Aug. 31, more than double the volume from a year earlier, according to data provider Dealogic. Dozens of them have used some or all of the proceeds of their bond sales to pay down their revolving credit facilities, ratings company Moody’s Investors Service found.
