Sovereign Default and Recovery Rates, 1983-2012: Moodyâ??s Investors Service.Overview
Moody’s Investors Service recently released their ninth annual report detailing and exploring sovereign bond issuer’s default and rating experiences and history from 1983 through 2012. Conclusions include that sovereign default rates have been modestly lower than those for corporate issuers, and that Moody’s sovereign ratings have been as powerful as corporate ratings in differentiating defaulters from non-defaulters.
Broadly speaking, this report elucidates trends in credit quality, historical sovereign defaults, sovereign cumulative default rates, recovery rates of defaulted sovereign issuers, rating performance measures, and more. Moody's also discusses the losses that investors incurred this year from country defaults, (i.e. a 70% loss from a EUR197 billion debt exchange that occurred this year in Greece) and circumstances surrounding individual sovereign bond defaults from 1998 to present.
Moody’s
comprehensive report is around 60 pages long, contains 24,800 words, twelve exhibits, four appendixes, and complete credit ratings on 119 countries; the related Excel spreadsheet supplies all of the information listed above in a editable, usable format. These two reports are a valuable tool for everyone from the first time analyst to the industry expert.
Interested?
Purchase Moody’s report
here.
Purchase the accompanying Excel spreadsheet
here. 
