The role of private equity group reputation in LBO financing

This paper investigates whether the reputation of acquiring private equity groups (PEGs) is related to the financing structure of leveraged buyouts (LBOs). Using a sample of 180 public-to-private LBOs in the US between January 1, 1997 and August 15, 2007, we find that reputable PEGs are more active in the LBO market when credit risk spreads are low and lending standards in the credit markets are lax. We also find that reputable PEGs pay narrower bank and institutional loan spreads, have longer loan maturities, and rely more on institutional loans. In addition, while we find that PEG reputation is positively related to buyout leverage (i.e., LBO debt divided by pre-LBO earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization (EBITDA) of the target), and leverage is significantly positively related to buyout pricing, we do not find any direct relation between PEG reputation and buyout valuations. The evidence suggests that PEG reputation is related to LBO financing structure not only because reputable PEGs are more likely to take advantage of market timing in credit markets and but also because PEG reputation reduces agency costs of LBO debt.     

Financial Restatements, Cost of Debt and Information Spillover: Evidence From the Secondary Loan Market

Abstract:  In this paper, we investigate the effect of financial restatements on the debt market. Specifically, we focus on the secondary loan market, which has become one of the largest capital markets in the US, and ask the following: (1) whether financial restatements increase restating firm's cost of debt financing and (2) whether the information about restatements arrives at the secondary loan market earlier than at the stock market? Using 176 restatement data, we find significant negative abnormal loan returns and increased bid-ask spreads around restatement announcements. Furthermore, this negative loan market reaction is more pronounced when the restatement is initiated by either the SEC or auditors, and when the primary reason for restatement is related to revenue recognition issues. Additionally, we find restatement information arrives at the secondary loan market earlier than at the equity market, and that such private information quickly flows into the equity market. We also show that stock prices begin to decline approximately 30 days prior to the restatement announcements for firms with traded loans. However, we do not find such informational leakage for firms without traded loans. Collectively, the results of this paper suggest: (1) increased cost of debt financing after restatements and (2) superior informational efficiency of the secondary loan market to the stock market.     

债务结构优化与企业创新——基于企业债券融资视角的研究

本文在我国保持宏观杠杆率基本稳定及实施创新驱动发展战略的现实背景下,从债券融资的视角,探讨债务结构优化对企业创新的影响。研究发现,债券融资与企业创新之间显著正相关,表明债券融资优化企业债务结构、提升企业创新能力的积极作用占据主导地位。进一步研究表明:(1)债券融资能够通过降低整体债务融资成本并延长整体债务期限促进企业创新;(2)债券融资对于银行贷款存在溢出效应,即企业通过债券融资,还能降低银行贷款利率、延长银行贷款期限,进而促进企业创新;(3)产品市场竞争和代理问题会在一定程度上削弱债券融资对企业创新的促进作用;(4)不同类型的债券对企业创新能力的作用存在异质性,债券发行的便利性是其影响企业创新的一个重要因素。     

The asymmetric relationship between returns and implied volatility: Evidence from global stock markets

We investigate the asymmetric relationship between returns and implied volatility for 20 developed and emerging international markets. In particular we examine how the sign and size of return innovations affect the expectations of daily changes in volatility. Our empirical findings indicate that the conditional contemporaneous return-volatility relationship varies not only based on the sign of the expected returns but also upon their magnitude, according to recent results from the behavioral finance literature. We find evidence of an asymmetric and reverse return-volatility relationship in many advanced, Asian, Latin-American, European and South African markets. We show that the US market displays the highest reaction to price falls, Asian markets present the lowest sensitivity to volatility expectations, while the Euro area is characterized by a homogeneous response both in terms of direction and impact. These results may be safely attributed to cultural and societal characteristics. An extensive quantile regression analysis demonstrates that the detected asymmetric pattern varies particularly across the extreme distribution tails i.e., in the highest/lowest quantile ranges. Indeed, the classical feedback and leverage hypotheses appear not plausible, whilst behavioral theories emerge as the new paradigm in real-world applications.     

Granger-causality in quantiles between financial markets: Using copula approach

This paper considers the Granger-causality in conditional quantile and examines the potential of improving conditional quantile forecasting by accounting for such a causal relationship between financial markets. We consider Granger-causality in distributions by testing whether the copula function of a pair of two financial markets is the independent copula. Among returns on stock markets in the US, Japan and U.K., we find significant Granger-causality in distribution. For a pair of the financial markets where the dependent (conditional) copula is found, we invert the conditional copula to obtain the conditional quantiles. Dependence between returns of two financial markets is modeled using a parametric copula. Different copula functions are compared to test for Granger-causality in distribution and in quantiles. We find significant Granger-causality in the different quantiles of the conditional distributions between foreign stock markets and the US stock market. Granger-causality from foreign stock markets to the US stock market is more significant from UK than from Japan, while causality from the US stock market to UK and Japan stock markets is almost equally significant.     

CLO Performance

We study the performance of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) to understand the market imperfections giving rise to these vehicles and their corresponding economic costs. CLO equity tranches earn positive abnormal returns from the risk-adjusted price differential between leveraged loans and CLO debt tranches. Debt tranches offer higher returns than similarly rated corporate bonds, making them attractive to banks and insurers that face risk-based capital requirements. Temporal variation in equity performance highlights the resilience of CLOs to market volatility due to their closed-end structure, long-term funding, and embedded options to reinvest principal proceeds.     

Development costs capitalization and debt financing

This study investigates debt market effects of research and development (R&D) costs capitalization, using a global sample of public bonds and private syndicated loans issued by public non‐financial firms. Firstly, we show that firms capitalize larger amounts of R&D in a year when they exhibit a propensity for issuing bonds, rather than borrowing funds privately from the syndicated loan market, in the subsequent year. Secondly, we provide evidence that capitalized R&D investments reduce the cost of debt. We infer that debt market participants are able to identify firms’ motives for R&D capitalization, as we find a reduction in the cost of debt only for those firms that do not show indications of employing R&D capitalization for earnings management reasons. Indeed, only for this sub‐sample of firms, the amount of capitalized R&D contributes positively to future earnings. We confirm that R&D capitalization is positively associated with audit fees and thus can be deemed to be a signaling device. Lastly, we find that it is the amount of R&D a firm is expected to capitalize and not the discretionary counterparts, which facilitates a firm's access to public debt markets, reduces bond and syndicated loan prices, and contributes to future benefits.     

Are stock markets really efficient? Evidence of the adaptive market hypothesis

This study examines the adaptive market hypothesis in the S&P500, FTSE100, NIKKEI225 and EURO STOXX 50 by testing for stock return predictability using daily data from January 1990 to May 2014. We apply three bootstrapped versions of the variance ratio test to the raw stock returns and also whiten the returns through an AR-GARCH process to study the nonlinear predictability after accounting for conditional heteroscedasticity through the BDS test. We evaluate the time-varying return predictability by applying these tests to fixed-length moving subsample windows and also examine whether there is a relationship between the level of predictability in stock returns and market conditions. The results show that there are periods of statistically significant return predictability, but also episodes of no statistically significant predictability in stock returns. We also find that certain market conditions are statistically significantly related to predictability in certain markets but each market interacts differently with the different market conditions. Therefore our findings suggest that return predictability in stock markets does vary over time in a manner consistent with the adaptive market hypothesis and that each market adapts differently to certain market conditions. Consequently our findings suggest that investors should view each market independently since different markets experience contrasting levels of predictability, which are related to market conditions.     

Bank Debt versus Bond Debt: Evidence from Secondary Market Prices

This paper uses a new data set of daily secondary market prices of loans to analyze the specialness of banks as monitors. Consistent with a monitoring advantage of loans over bonds, we find the secondary loan market to be informationally more efficient than the secondary bond market prior to a loan default. Specifically, we find that secondary market loan returns Granger cause secondary market bond returns prior to a loan default. In contrast, secondary market bond returns do not Granger cause secondary market loan returns prior to a loan default.     

Relative default rates on corporate loans and bonds

We use two alternative matched-set methodologies to examine for differences in loan and bond default rates among US non-financial corporate issuers. Under both methodologies, the data indicate that loan default rates are roughly 20% lower than the bond default rates due to issuers that default on their bonds but avoid bankruptcy and avoid defaulting on their loans. For a small number of European issuers, the data suggest a similar reduction in loan default rates relative to bond default rates. However, the European results differ qualitatively from the US results, due likely to differences in US and European bankruptcy regimes, as well as the larger role of bank debt on most European issuers’ balance sheets. These results have important implications for investors, bank supervisors, and rating agencies that assess the relative expected credit losses on loans versus bonds.     

An inverted U‐shaped crude oil price return‐implied volatility relationship

We examined the return–volatility relationship for USO ETF oil price return and CBOE Crude Oil ETF Volatility Index, OVX. The data for the USO and OVX covers the period covering May 11, 2007 to February 28, 2013. Our OLS regression results suggest evidence of regular feedback and leverage effects. When we employ linear quantile regression techniques, we find evidence of regular and inverse feedback effects. The inverse feedback effects being noticeable in the upper quantile region of the oil return distribution. There is also support for a regular leverage effect in USO prices. We also examined the return–volatility relationship using quantile regression copula methods for measuring the degree of asymmetry in the relationships between the oil price return and implied volatility. The results of the analysis indicate, first, that there exists a negative relationship between contemporaneous oil VIX and USO ETF oil returns. Second, that the relationship between oil returns and implied volatilities depends on the quartile at which the relationship is being investigated. Third, there exists an inverted U-shaped dependency relationship between returns and implied volatilities across quantiles. Fourth, though an inverted U-shape exists, the shape is different from those observed in stock markets.     

The integration of bank syndicated loan and junk bond markets

This paper hypothesizes that the special role of banks as corporate quasi-insiders has been changing due to developments in informational, legal and institutional infrastructures of syndicated loan markets. We investigate the integration of intermediated and disintermediated financial markets through highly leveraged transaction (HLT) syndicated loans during the 1990s. We demonstrate that, with the emergence of traded HLT syndicated loans as an alternative high-yield asset to high-yield bonds, market integration has dramatically increased. Taking the late 1980s and 1990s together, different factors explain the movement of credit spreads of the two markets. HLT loan market’s spreads are strongly affected by bank liquidity. Bank liquidity’s effect on HLT loan spreads disappears after 1993. From 1994–1999, junk bond market liquidity factors affect bank loan pricing. We interpret these changes as evidence of the erosion of bank specialness.     

What do we know about the price spillover between green bonds and Islamic stocks and stock market indices?

This paper investigates the risk transmission, linkages, and directional predictability between green bonds, Islamic stocks, and other asset classes. Using daily data from November 2008 to August 2020, we use the Standard & Poor's (S&P) Green Bond Index to represent the green bond market and the Dow Jones Islamic World Index and the S&P Global Shariah Indices to represent Islamic stocks. The other asset classes considered include the S&P 500 Stock Composite, S&P 500 Bond, and S&P 500 Energy indices. This paper uses the novel quantile cross-spectral (coherency), the windowed scalogram difference (WSD), and the cross-quantilogram (CQ) correlation approaches. The results from the quantile coherency analysis reveal a negative spillover effect from green bond price returns to Islamic stocks in the long run, which indicates that the green bond market poses a long-run systemic risk to Islamic stocks. From the WSD analysis, the results show that the integration between green bonds and Islamic stocks, the S&P 500 Stock Composite, and the S&P 500 Bond index is weaker during volatile market conditions. The CQ correlation suggests that the dependency between green bonds and other asset returns is concentrated in the lower quantiles and that this dependency is weaker at longer lags. Our results underscore the significance of green bonds in investor portfolios as a new investment asset class.     

Credit derivatives and loan pricing

This paper examines the relation between the new markets for credit default swaps (CDS) and banks’ pricing of syndicated loans to US corporates. We find that changes in CDS spreads have a significantly positive coefficient and explain about 25% of subsequent monthly changes in aggregate loan spreads during 2000–2005. Moreover, when compared to traditional explanatory factors, they turn out to be the dominant determinant of loan spreads. In particular, they explain loan rates much better than same rated bonds. This suggests that CDS prices contain, beyond general credit risk, to a substantial extent information relevant for bank lending. We also find that, over time, new information from CDS markets is faster incorporated into loans, but information from other markets is not. Overall, our results indicate that the markets for CDS have gained an important role for banks.     

Measuring quantile dependence and testing directional predictability between Bitcoin,altcoins and traditional financial assets

This paper studies causal relationships and the potential of improving conditional quantile forecasting between Bitcoin and seven altcoin markets as well as between Bitcoin and three mainstream assets, namely gold, oil, and the S&P500, by applying the Granger-causality in distribution and in quantiles tests. We find significant bidirectional causality between Bitcoin and all altcoins and assets considered in the two distribution tails. An enhanced forecast of Bitcoin price returns is thus derived by conditioning on altcoins or assets and vice versa during extreme market conditions. However, under normal market conditions the results for the centre of the distribution of the Bitcoin price returns conditional on altcoins depend on both the altcoin considered and quantile under investigation. We also find evidence that Bitcoin is not isolated from financial markets, while this developing financial asset is a strong safe-haven for oil and a weak safe-haven for S&P500, but it cannot be considered as either a weak or strong safe-haven for gold. Our results reveal a more complete relationship between Bitcoin and altcoins as well as financial assets than was previously considered.     

我国居民杠杆率现状及影响因素研究

近年来,我国居民部门杠杆率的快速上升引起社会各界关注。本文使用货币信贷和城镇储户调查数据,对我国居民部门杠杆率和偿债能力现状进行了分析,并运用各省住户贷款数据计算各省的居民杠杆率,使用面板数据模型对居民杠杆率上升的原因进行了实证分析。结果表明,房价的快速上涨和住房销售的增长都对居民部门杠杆率的上升有显著正向影响,其中房价上涨的影响程度更大。此外,金融发展水平和老年人抚养比对居民杠杆率有正向影响,少年人抚养比对居民杠杆率有负向影响。     

我国居民杠杆率现状及影响因素研究

近年来,我国居民部门杠杆率的快速上升引起社会各界关注。本文使用货币信贷和城镇储户调查数据,对我国居民部门杠杆率和偿债能力现状进行了分析,并运用各省住户贷款数据计算各省的居民杠杆率,使用面板数据模型对居民杠杆率上升的原因进行了实证分析。结果表明,房价的快速上涨和住房销售的增长都对居民部门杠杆率的上升有显著正向影响,其中房价上涨的影响程度更大。此外,金融发展水平和老年人抚养比对居民杠杆率有正向影响,少年人抚养比对居民杠杆率有负向影响。     

Local product market competition and bank loans

We investigate the influences of local product market competition on the cost of private debt. Our evidence suggests that the cost of bank loans is significantly higher for firms headquartered in states with greater local product market competition measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for resident industries. To establish causality, we examine the recognition of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine and firm relocations to identify exogenous shocks to local product market competition. We find that the cost of bank loans is lower for firms facing less intense local product market competition after the adoption of IDD and higher for firms relocated to states with more competitive product markets. The results imply that banks value the characteristics of a firm's local product market when approving loan contracts.     

Linkages between Indian and US financial markets: impact of global financial crisis and Eurozone debt crisis

This paper examines inter-linkages between Indian and US equity, foreign exchange and money markets using the vector autoregressive-multivariate GARCH-BEKK framework. We investigate the impact of global financial crisis (GFC) and Eurozone debt crisis (EZDC) on the conditional volatility and conditional correlation estimates derived from the multivariate GARCH model for Indian and US financial markets. Our results indicate that there is significant bidirectional causality-in-mean between the Indian stock market returns and the Rs./USD market returns, and significant unidirectional causality-in-mean from the US stock market returns to the Indian stock market returns. As regards volatility spillovers, we find that volatility in the Indian stock market rises in response to domestic as well as US financial market shocks but Indian financial market shocks do not impact the US markets. Further, impact of the recent crisis episodes on the covariance matrix is found to be significant. We find that volatility in the Indian and US financial markets significantly amplified during GFC. The conditional correlations across asset markets were significantly accentuated in the wake of the two crisis episodes. The impact of GFC on cross-market conditional correlations is higher for majority of the asset market pairs in comparison to the EZDC.     

Information diffusion and the predictability of New Zealand stock market returns

This paper examines the impact of international predictors from liquid markets on the predictability of excess returns in the New Zealand stock market using data from May 1992 to February 2011. We find that US stock market return and VIX contribute significantly to the out‐of‐sample forecasts at short horizons even after controlling for the effect of local predictors, while the contribution by Australian stock market return is not significant. We further demonstrate that the predictability of New Zealand stock market returns using US market predictors could be explained by the information diffusion between these two countries.