Moody’s Lists 283 Companies Risking Default: GM, Chrysler, Kodak,
Unisys

Wall Street Journal: With 283 companies, the list holds nearly every
sector of the economy. The dominant industries on this at-risk list
include much of the U.S. auto industry, the casino sector, and many
retail chains, newspapers and broadcast-TV and radio-station networks.
Energy firms, airlines and restaurant chains appear often.

The Bottom Rung, which Moody’s began compiling a few months ago and
will update monthly, represents roughly the riskiest 20% of all
companies it tracks, ranked by those with the lowest credit ratings.

Moody’s list consists of companies with B3 rating or lower. That
rating is the 16th lowest on Moody’s 21-step ratings system.

Moody’s estimates about 45% of the Bottom Rung companies will default
in the next year. Combined these firms have more than $260 billion in
bond and bank debt.

Trying to predict or warn about coming defaults means singling out
some firms ; a fact that has already put Moody’s in direct
confrontation with several companies that say they’re in decent fiscal
health. The Spanish-language media company Univision Inc. and Eastman
Kodak (EK: 2.47 -0.14 -5.36%) expressed on Monday dissatisfaction for
their inclusion on the list saying it wasn’t warranted. Some of the
names on the list however, aren’t so surprising, such as GM Corp (GM:
1.09 -0.06 -5.22%) and Chrysler. But some less-obvious names, notes
the Journal, like IT giant Unisys CP (UIS: 1.29 +0.02 +1.57%) are also
included. One name not on the Bottom Rung, but likely to be added when
it is first updated next month, is Clear Channel Comm. (CLWR: 4.59
-0.35 -7.09%), which has already been downgraded by Moody’s.

http://www.dailymarkets.com/stocks/2...-kodak-unisys/

Ten bucks, after iBiquity and the rest of their cohorts default, and
every expendable employee is fired, that the last man standing with be
the IBLOCK jammers, runnning their automated jukeboxes.