We received some good news a few weeks ago: Standard & Poor’s raised our credit rating to AAA, which is the highest rating it bestows. Only 15 other U.S. industrial or property-casualty companies are rated AAA, down from 28 in 1980. Corporate bondholders have taken their lumps in the past few years from “event risk.” This term refers to the overnight degradation of credit that accompanies a heavily-leveraged purchase or recapitalization of a business whose financial policies, up to then, had been conservative. In a world of takeovers inhabited by few owner-managers, most corporations present
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