Overseas Yield Hunters Bag Record Share of U.S. Corporate Debt
- Foreigners fleeing negative rates own 40%, Wells Fargo says
- Europeans are biggest holders, Asians the fastest-growing
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Foreign buyers are poised to push their record 40 percent share of the U.S. corporate-bond market even higher as they seek to escape negative yields that have swept the globe.
While Europe is the biggest overseas owner of the debt with 80 percent of the foreign holdings, investors from Asia were the fastest-growing buyers, according to Nathaniel Rosenbaum at Wells Fargo & Co. Taiwanese life insurers were among the hungriest buyers, buying up the notes to boost exposure to the market after Taiwanese regulatory changes that allowed an increase in allocations to overseas bonds.