Catch 22 for corporate liquidity

Today’s inhospitable corporate financing environment contrasts sharply with that of the late 1990s, when start-ups with half-baked business plans secured financing easily. Now, even well-established multinationals with solid cashflows and long management track-records find it an uphill battle to maintain investors’ confidence. In this post-Enron world investors are extremely credit conscious, and hyper-aware of corporate liquidity.

This is creating a vicious circle, where investors burned by