Global company default risk fell in June - index

NEW YORK, June 30 (Reuters) - The number of companies with an increased risk of defaulting on their debt globally fell in June for the third consecutive month, indicating the worst of the corporate default wave may be over, according to risk management firm Kamakura Corp.

Kamakura's index of "troubled" public companies fell by 2.4 percentage points in June from May, to 16.4 percent of the global public company universe, down from its recent peak of 24.3 percent in March, the company said on Tuesday.

A company is considered troubled when its default probability is in excess of 1 percent. The index hit a high of 28 percent in September 2001.

The number of companies with a default probability of more than 20 percent fell by 98 to 380, or a drop of 0.4 percentage points to 1.4 percent of the 26,900 companies in Kamakura's database.

Those with a 10-to-20 percent default risk also fell by 0.4 percentage point to 1.6 percent of the total universe, the company said.

Companies with a 5-to-10 percent default risk dropped by 0.3 percentage point to 2.7 percent in the month, and companies with a 1-to-5 percent default probability decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 10.7 percent, Kamakura said.

Credit conditions are now better than in 30.4 percent of the months since the index's initiation in January 1990. The all time low was 5.4 percent in April and May of 2006.

Companies with the largest increase in short-term default risk in the month included Russian conglomerate Sistema JSFC (SSAq.L), U.S. radio broadcaster Radio One Inc (ROIA.O), newspaper publisher McClatchy Co (MNI.N) and California-based Spanish language media company Entravision Communications (EVC.N), Kamakura said. (Reporting by Karen Brettell; Editing by Kenneth Barry)