U S Private Placement Debt Markets United （美国私募债券市场）.pdf

U. S. Private Placement Debt Markets in the 1990s Tessa Hebb, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Introduction From the late 1980s, through the last recession, to today, mid-sized firms in America have experienced a severe credit crunch that has restricted their ability to grow and expand. The origins of this credit crunch are found in a simultaneous constriction of bank lending, coupled with a reduction of available funds in the traditional markets of private placement. The result has been lost jobs in America, lost opportunities, and lost growth. The traditional private placement debt market has been shrinking for two reasons. First, there is a lack of intermediaries who bring together pools of capital and potential borrowers. This role used to be performed by large insurance companies but changes within their industry that occurred in the late 1980s and since, has seen them leave the field. To date there has been no major institutional investor to take their place. Secondly, a change within the private placement market itself occurred in 1990, creating a secondary market for private placement debt that was specifically designed to attract foreign issuers to American capital markets. By 1994, Rule 144A private placement funds accounted for $53.5 billion of U.S. assets, roughly 40% of all private placement issues made that year, of that a full 39% or $20.0 billion was invested in private placement foreign debt by U.S. lenders. Growing American Pension Funds While our mid-sized companies have faced a credit crunch, American workers savings and deferred wages have been growing, along with other elements of American capital markets. Pension funds hit a record level of $3.47 trillion by 1991. In that year the public sector pension funds alone had an asset base of $950 billion. To date pension funds in America account for a full third of all financial assets. The growth of these assets has been