It was once said that, aerodynamically speaking, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that, so it goes on flying anyway. There has been something of the bumblebee about the corporate sector during the global economic downturn. With access to credit drying up during the nadir of the crisis in early 2009, and the price of loans soaring, companies that really should have dropped out of the sky have managed to keep on flying.
Traditional forms of bank funding all but disappeared and those companies that did survive were forced to rely upon alternative sources of finance. Bigger companies were able to tap the international bond and equity markets, while smaller entities strived to extract much-needed liquidity from within. Effective working capital management became the treasurer's mantra in 2009.
