A reckoning has begun for corporate debt monsters

When investment bankers agreed in January to underwrite the leveraged buy-out of Citrix, a software company, by a group of private-equity firms, returns on safe assets like government bonds were piffling. Yield-hungry investors were desperate to get their hands on any meaningful return, which the $16.5bn Citrix deal promised. Lenders including Bank of America, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs were happy to dole out $15bn to finance the…