Moody's: Asian Liquidity Stress Index rises slightly to 21.3%

Moody's Investors Service says that its Asian Liquidity Stress Index rose slightly to 21.3% in November from 21.0% in October.

The index rose as the net number of rated high-yield companies with Moody's weakest speculative-grade liquidity (SGL-4) scores rose to 27 and the number of rated high-yield companies increased by three to 127.

"The index -- which increases when speculative-grade liquidity appears to decrease -- remains well below the record high of 37.0% reached during the fourth quarter of 2008 amid the global financial crisis," says Annalisa Di Chiara, a Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst.

"It is a bit above the index's long-term average of 20.3% but slightly below its trailing 12-month average of 22.3%," adds Di Chiara, who was speaking on the release of Moody's latest report on the index, entitled "Asian Liquidity Stress Index."

The liquidity sub-index for Chinese speculative-grade companies rose to 21.2% from 20.0%, while the number with SGL-4 scores rose to 14 from 13. In addition, the number of high-yield Chinese companies rose to 66 from 65.

Meanwhile, China's high-yield property sub-index was unchanged at 15.4% and the high-yield industrial sub-index climbed to 29.6% from 26.9%.

However, the Indonesian sub-index declined to 8.0% from 8.3% as the number of Indonesian companies with SGL-4 scores remained at two and the total number of high-yield Indonesian companies increased by one to 25.

Moody's downgraded the corporate family ratings of three companies in November and upgraded one. This compares to the quarterly downgrade/upgrade ratio of 1.14x for the third quarter.

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