U.S. investment-grade corporations already have eclipsed last year's record for bond issuance, with $1.066 trillion so far for 2013, up $13 billion from 2012, according to Dealogic, The Wall Street Journal reports.

It started tracking the figures in 1995.

On Tuesday, Microsoft Corp. sold $3.25 billion of bonds, and Johnson & Johnson issued $3.5 billion of debt Monday.

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The Microsoft deal was met with strong demand, with the issue nearly three times oversubscribed as investors placed $9 billion of orders, according to The Journal.

With bond yields having risen since May amid speculation that the Federal Reserve will soon taper its quantitative easing, investors are enticed.

"The general demand for yield is still very strong out there," Kathy Jones, fixed-income strategist at Charles Schwab, told The Journal.

The 10-year Treasury note yielded 2.84 percent Wednesday, up from 1.66 percent May 2.

In September, Verizon Communications completed a record-high $49 billion bond sale to pay for its purchase of Vodafone's stake in Verizon Wireless.

"The market is receptive to deals that were beyond anybody's dreams as to how big they could become, if it's the right name in the right sector with the right business model," Amery Dunn, head of U.S. debt capital markets at RBC Capital Markets, told The Journal.

Corporate bond issuance is strong in Europe too. Companies there sold the most debt in November for any month since January, as interest rates neared a five-month low, Bloomberg reported.

"Issuers have been keen to catch the market while sentiment is still good," Harpreet Parhar, a credit strategist at Credit Agricole in London, told the news service.

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