Investors increasingly concerned about company debt: BAML survey

LONDON (Reuters) - Investors' fears about company leverage hit a ten-year high, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's January fund manager survey found on Tuesday, also highlighting their continued concern about a global trade war.

Fund managers named the U.S. dollar as the most crowded trade - ahead of tech stocks - for the second month running, while trade war topped the list of biggest tail risks for the eighth straight month.

Corporate indebtedness was the chief concern among fund managers for the first time since 2009, the survey found, with a net 48 percent of fund managers believing company balance sheets are overleveraged.

Investors reported their worst outlook on profits since 2008, with a net 52 percent of those surveyed expecting global profits to deteriorate in the next year.

Growth expectations also continued to fall: a net 60 percent of investors surveyed think global growth will weaken over the next 12 months, the worst outlook since July 2008.

However, only 14 percent of fund managers expect a global economic recession in 2019.

(Reporting by Helen Reid, Editing by Josephine Mason)