Fitch: EMEA Corporates Benefit from Search for Yield as Funding Costs Fall

Fitch Ratings says in its latest EMEA Corporate View Dashboard that companies continued to benefit from tightening spreads in early 2015 as the ECB's sovereign bond-buying programme kicked off. Investors ploughed into blue-chip credits to shelter from negative yields on an increasing amount of eurozone sovereign debt and as measured "risk-on" returned to European high yield.

Nevertheless, an anaemic growth and inflation outlook for the eurozone, the ongoing Greek debt crisis and geopolitics have the potential to stoke downside risks in 2015.

Key themes to watch in 2015 will be rising M&A as companies strive to grow revenues in weak demand conditions and ongoing challenges facing emerging market corporates.