Judging from GECC’s fund-raising in the debt capital markets over the past 12 months, one might question whether there had been a credit crisis at all. In 2007, GECC raised $90 billion, half of it in the latter part of the year. Already this year, it has issued $52 billion in bonds globally. There is no doubt that GECC’s triple-A status has helped. Its bonds have offered investors a haven as confidence in other financial borrowers has faltered.
To attribute the success of the firm’s consistent visits to the bond market solely to its triple-A status, however, would be to do GECC’s fund-raising committee an injustice.
Kitty Yoh, GECC’s deputy treasurer, recognized that the funding strategy would have to be altered to fit the environment early on. "Like most other individuals in the marketplace, we cannot claim to say we saw the credit crunch coming, but in 2007 we began to notice problems on the horizon, and so became a little more conservative," she says. "When there were good opportunities to issue and when we saw investor demand, we would take advantage.