As good as it gets

Last year was a remarkable year for credit – remarkable for the lack of bad news. Previous years have been scarred by blow-ups on a grand scale – Russia, LTCM, Enron, 9/11, WorldCom – but spreads in 2003 were so rampant that not even war in the Gulf could dampen investors’ spirits. Philip Moore reports

For the US credit market, the first week of January set the tone for 2003, with a barnstorming $20 billion or so of new issuance from a broadly diversified range of borrowers. Investors eagerly lapped up the new bonds in the belief that an imminent hike in interest rates, allied with a potentially protracted and messy war in the Gulf, would diminish supply over the months to come, with some