During the late 1980s the United States experienced a major wave of corporate leveraging as firms substituted debt for equity. The boom peaked in 1989, after which the junk bond market collapsed, bank credit tightened, and leveraged buyouts (LBOs) dropped off sharply. Beginning in 1991, the favorable stock market helped firms that had been taken private with largely borrowed money to survive by issuing public equity. As the economy recovered from recession, mergers and acquisitions resumed the acceleration that had begun in the 1980s. Corporate restructuring often occurred without much leveraging, however, and in the more friendly deals of the 1990s CEOs were likely to be in control.