Restructuring professionals play the waiting game

By Elena Moya

LONDON (Reuters) - Dozens of restructuring professionals hired ahead of a much-expected wave of corporate defaults are all focused on the same thing: finding deals.

Goldman Sachs Corp. Inc. (GS.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N), FTI Consulting are among the many banks, advisory firms and restructuring boutiques that have expanded their teams over the past year on hopes that rising debt levels and increasing interest rates would land a wave of corporate defaults.

Interest payment failures remain at historic lows, however, at just barely above 1 percent in both Europe and the United States, rating agencies say, far below the historic average of about 4 percent.

"In the current market, restructuring professionals have to look more broadly at opportunities," said Lachlan Edwards, managing director and co-head of the restructuring unit of Goldman Sachs in Europe, on the sidelines of a London-based conference on Wednesday.

Investment banks are occupying their highly paid bankers in other areas, such as mergers and acquisitions, said one banker who requested anonymity, and who is not working on restructuring deals at the moment, despite being head of the unit.

The amount of liquidity provided by investors, including hedge funds, and their willingness to fund distressed companies has kept struggling businesses afloat while pushing the prices of distressed debt to almost par levels.

A distressed debt trader at a major investment bank, who also wanted to remain unidentified, said he was "far from busy".

Publications that once covered distressed debt and restructuring deals, such as Debtwire and IFR, have stopped or reduced their coverage.