Editor’s letter

The first fixed-income index was created 30 years ago. Around the same time a bond market was emerging that allowed smaller and more indebted companies to find funding – the high-yield market. This has now grown to be a mainstay of the US economy representing half a trillion dollars in outstanding debt.

In the past 10 years alone, the US investment-grade corporate bond market has tripled in size to almost $2 trillion; the US asset-backed securities market has doubled to $141 million. And in the last six or seven years a market has been created that allows investors to trade credit risk at its purest, removing worries about underlying interest rates – credit default swaps. This in turn has given rise to countless new products, from synthetic collateralized debt obligations to basket-linked notes.

In fact the corporate bond, credit derivative and structured finance universe has been growing and developing at a breakneck pace. And yet the market remains woefully under-represented by the financial press. In the mainstream press, credit sometimes falls on the government bond pages and sometimes on the equities pages. In more specialist financial publications, credit is covered in piecemeal fashion.

Credit magazine would like to change this. Our purpose is to explore issues relevant to the credit and credit derivatives markets. We aim to promote best practice, encourage transparency, and facilitate debate. But more importantly, we aim to produce a magazine that you enjoy reading!

David Watts