January 9th, 2005, 3:35 am
I would have to agree with apine that this does not make sense. This is especially true if we are talking about corporate bonds that are denominated in the same currency as the treasury bills (I wasn't sure if that was implied in your question or not). Theoretically, the treasury bill is a (default) risk-free security, especially if denominated in the local currency (i.e. the government can always print money to pay it off). In the strict sense, a corporate bond cannot have a rating that is lower than the government. When the government collapses, I doubt that there would be any investors that would be willing to buy stake in the local company. However, there are cases when there are companies that were able to get the same rating as the government (although this does not necessarily imply they can get the same yield, but very close), such as Petronas in Malaysia. But, as apine has said, in the US and most European markets, this is a highly unlikely event.