Teaching long term debt

I sometimes find it difficult to find real world articles that make long term debt more interesting. Usually, there is discussion about the features and then pricing. However, I don't think students get a good feeling for covenants, standing and default issues. There is an article in the WSJ today (not free to link) that is really interesting and discusses a number of interesting real world bond issues:

For months, bond investors have lamented the swing by companies to shareholder-friendly practices such as stock dividends, which often lead to credit-rating downgrades and take money away from such bond-friendly pursuits as debt repayment.

At the same time, the syndicated-loan market -- debt that carries recovery claims senior to bonds -- has exploded. In some cases, that means reduced recovery prospects for bondholders because holders of bank debt have the first claim on collateral.

Bondholders are forced now to become more vigilant, keeping one eye trained on the bank debt on the top of a company's capital structure and the other on stockholders, who are growing increasingly insistent on moves that benefit shareholders.

A number of interesting issues are brought up in the article, and issues that would create a lot of intereting classroom discussion.