Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's Operation Twist is paying dividends in the corporate bond market.
The central bank's program to extend the average maturity of debt in its portfolio by selling short-term bonds and buying longer-term ones is helping borrowers from McDonald's Corp. to Procter & Gamble Co. cut interest rates to record lows. Since August, the difference in yields between notes due in one to three years and bonds that mature in 15 years or more has shrunk by 0.7 percentage point to 3.3 percentage points.
Companies already flush with cash are locking in all-time low borrowing costs for decades thanks to the Fed's Twist and its bid to stimulate the world's largest economy by pledging to hold rates near zero until at least late 2014. Sales of bonds due in more than 15 years soared to $13.6 billion in January from $5.28 billion in December, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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