Some tremors in the credit markets

From the WSJ ($)

In another sign of growing investor unease toward riskier classes of debt, Thomson Corp.'s Thomson Learning yesterday significantly restructured a planned junk-bond offering, reducing the amount of money it planned to raise to $1.6 billion from $2.1 billion. The textbook publisher also had to drop a feature -- known as a payment-in-kind toggle provision -- on some of its bonds that would have allowed it to pay interest in the form of additional debt if it ran short of cash in the future.

Such provisions are an example of the kind of easy terms for borrowers that have gotten some investors worried about loose lending terms in the corporate debt market.

Posted on June 22, 2007 and filed under Finance.