Justin Fox, Columnist

The Many Rewards of Paying Bills Late

Not for the little guys, of course. But for big corporations, it pays off.

May 10, 2017 at 6:53 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

We're pretty sure they don't worry about such things.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

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For individuals, not paying bills on time is a sign of financial distress. That's true for most businesses, too. For big businesses, though, things are different.

For one thing, they generally don't pay their bills on time. Only 10.8 percent of publicly traded corporations in the U.S. pay suppliers on time or early, according to new data from Dun & Bradstreet.