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- BUSINESS, Page 38Business NotesFINANCE The Price Is Right
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- Just as homeowners are rushing to refinance mortgages to cash
- in on falling interest rates, giant U.S. companies are feverishly
- rolling over the huge debts they assumed in the 1980s. In the
- heaviest weekly deluge of new issues ever, companies sold some
- $11 billion of corporate notes and bonds last week. High
- rollers included the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority,
- which issued $2 billion of five-to-10-year notes, and AT&T,
- which sold $1 billion of debt securities with maturities of up
- to 30 years.
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- The flood of new issues followed the torrid pace set in
- 1991, when companies sold a record $132 billion of corporate
- bonds as the Federal Reserve Board pushed down interest rates.
- While most such deals represented refinancings that will reduce
- corporate payments to investors, the latest sales could also be
- a harbinger of corporate investment in new plant and equipment
- later this year. "If interest rates remain relatively low, we
- should see a rebound in capital spending once the economic
- outlook brightens," says John Lonski, senior economist for
- Moody's Investors Service.
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