Corporate debt: the big bubble to watch now

Ten years on from Lehman Brothers, where does the biggest risk lie? On corporate balance sheets.

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It's not just fragile banks you need to be wary of
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The ten-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers going bust has been the cue for many reflections on what exactly went wrong and what we should or could have done about it. But while this is all very interesting (or not, depending on your point of view), a more pertinent question for investors today is: what will spawn the next big crash? Banks are safer than they were even if they haven't been sufficiently restructured for our liking so it's unlikely to originate with them this time. But as David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff notes, you don't need fragile banks to have a market crash the dotcom bust is just one example.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.