Distressed Debt in U.S. Doubles to $500 Billion in Two Weeks

In less than two weeks, the amount of distressed debt in the U.S. alone has doubled to a half-trillion dollars as the collapse of oil prices and the fallout from the coronavirus shutters entire industries.

In all, U.S. corporate bonds that yield at least 10 percentage points above Treasuries, as well as loans that trade for less than 80 cents on the dollar, have swelled to $533 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show. On March 6, the total was $214 billion. If you count all company debt globally, including loans to small- and mid-sized companies that rarely if ever trade, ...