The slow corporate embrace of CSAs

Risk.net research finds 28 of 50 large companies now have CSAs – but has the trend run its course?

When Vodafone published its annual report in March last year, sharp-eyed investors may have spotted what looked like a red flag – a ballooning of the company’s short-term borrowing from €4.2 billion ($5.1 billion) in 2019 to €11.8 billion in 2020. Why had the telecoms giant loaded up on debt? And did it have anything to do with the Covid-19 lockdown that hit Europe just weeks before the report was filed?

In fact, it wasn’t a red flag at all – but there was a hidden connection to the pandemic.