Section A Directions: In this
section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements.
Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements
in the fewest possible words. Please write your answers on Answer Sheet 2.
Conventional wisdom says that it is better to be a large
company than a small one when credit is tight. Bigger firms have more room for
maneuver (机动): They have access to more types of funding, they have more fat to
cut, and they have greater bargaining power with lenders. Even so, life is
getting ever more uncomfortable for the bigger beasts of the corporate
jungle. According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent lending
survey, American banks are tightening terms more aggressively for bigger firms
than for smaller ones. Lenders are more cautious than they have been at least
since 1990. The story among European banks is similar. Lenders in emerging
markets can be more suspicious of multinational firms than they are of locals.
"We just don’t know what they’ve got on their balance-sheets back home," says
one bank boss in Africa. Violent movements in exchange rates are
causing additional headaches, says Andrew Balfour of Slaughter & May, a law
firm. Calculations of financial ratios can be thrown out by wild currency
movements, potentially triggering breaches of loan agreements. Companies with
sterlingdenominated (以英镑为单位的) credit lines may find that their facilities are
not big enough as a result of the pound’s recent sharp fall, for
instance. It is not panic stations yet. Most firms can survive
for a while with the credit tap turned off. Analysis by Moody’s, a rating
agency, shows that the vast majority of highly rated companies in America and
Europe have enough headroom, in the form of cash and undrawn bank facilities, to
be able to survive for 12 months without needing new financing. European
corporate-debt markets have seen a rare flurry (骤雨) of issues in the past few
days by opportunistic, highly rated firms. Governments are also
working hard to hold out credit markets. The Fed’s program to buy commercial
paper, a form of short-term company debt, had acquired almost $300 billion by
November 26th. Banks on both sides of the Atlantic are issuing lots of
government-backed bonds, which should encourage lending. What may borrowers suffer from the violent movements in exchange rates