The Maturity Structure of Corporate Debt

We provide an empirical examination of the determinants of corporate debt maturity. Our evidence offers strong support for the contracting-cost hypothesis. Firms that have few growth options, are large, or are regulated have more long-term debt in their capital structure. We find little evidence that firms use the maturity structure of their debt to signal information to the market. The evidence is consistent, however, with the hypothesis that firms with larger information asymmetries issue more short-term debt. We find no evidence that taxes affect debt maturity.     

Debt maturity structure and the 1997 Asian financial crisis

The paper investigates the effects of firm-specific and country-specific characteristics, and the 1997 Asian financial crisis on the debt maturity structure of firms in the Asia Pacific region. The results indicate that firms in this region have a target optimal debt maturity structure, and the maturity structure decision of a firm is driven by both its own characteristics and the economic environment. They also reveal that the crisis had significant effect on firm's debt maturity structure and their determinants.     

Debt maturity dispersion and the cost of bank loans

This paper examines the relation between corporate debt maturity dispersion and the pricing and terms of bank loans. Analyzing a sample of U.S. bank loans from 2002 to 2016, we find that firms with a dispersed debt maturity structure pay a lower interest rate. The rate-reduction effect is significant only for firms without a credit rating. For these firms, spreading debt maturity dates also results in lower commitment fees, fewer covenant restrictions, and less collateral in their loan contracts. The impact of debt maturity dispersion on the pricing and structure of bank loans is stronger when borrowers have higher rollover risk or when the need for monitoring is greater. Our results suggest that dispersion in debt maturity structure mitigates the agency problem associated with shareholder–creditor conflicts by reducing rollover risk and alleviating the need for monitoring, which results in borrowers receiving more favorable terms in loan contracts.     

How Entrenchment, Incentives and Governance Influence REIT Capital Structure

Although recent literature has confirmed the importance of viewing a firm??s capital structure choices of leverage and debt maturity as jointly determined, to date there has been little analysis of the importance of traditional governance variables on a firm??s capital structure decisions using a simultaneous equations approach. We examine the influence of managerial incentives, traditional managerial monitoring mechanisms and managerial entrenchment on the capital structure of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Using panel data, we estimate a system of simultaneous equations for leverage and maturity and find that firms with entrenched CEOs use less leverage and shorter maturity debt. This is consistent with the expectation that managers acting in their own self interest will choose lower leverage to reduce liquidity risk and use short maturity debt to preserve their ability to enhance their compensation and reputations by empire building. We also find evidence that traditional alignment mechanisms such as equity and option ownership have an offsetting effect; and that firms where the founder serves as CEO choose higher leverage and longer maturity debt. The results also provide evidence that leverage and maturity are substitutes, firms with high profitability and growth opportunities use less leverage and firms with liquid assets use more leverage and longer maturity debt.     

The Determinants of Debt Maturity at Issuance: A System-Based Model

We examine the determinants of corporate debt maturity while taking into account the interdependent relation between maturity and leverage. We do this by estimating a simultaneous-equations model on debt maturity and leverage for a sample of bond-issuing firms. To compare with previous studies, we also estimate a single-equation model on debt maturity using OLS. We define debt maturity as either the maturity of bonds at issuance (incremental approach), or the percentage of a firm's total debt that matures in more than three years (balance-sheet approach). Corroborating the findings of many previous studies, our single-equation OLS results support the underinvestment hypothesis purporting that firms with greater growth opportunities have shorter-term debt. However, under the simultaneous-equations model, the negative relation between a firm's debt maturity and its growth opportunities ceases to hold. Instead, it is the leverage decision that is influenced by growth opportunities. This suggests that existing models may overestimate the effect of growth opportunities on debt maturity.     

Investor sentiment and firm capital structure

We provide novel evidence of the role of investor sentiment in determining firms' capital structure decisions from three perspectives: leverage ratio, debt maturity and leverage target adjustment. We find that when investor sentiment is high, firms increase their leverage ratios, supporting our contention that high investor sentiment increases firms' debt capacity and facilitates the use of an aggressive leverage policy. Debt maturity is shorter in high sentiment periods, implying that firms are confident about future earnings and use shorter debt maturity to signal their financial solvency. Leverage target adjustment is slower in low sentiment periods, indicating higher costs of external finance. Furthermore, the sentiment-leverage relationship sensitivity is greater for financially constrained firms. Our extended analysis determines that leverage-increasing firms generate lower stock returns subsequent to a period of high sentiment, offering practical insights into the economic consequences of increasing leverage in high sentiment periods on corporate value for investors. Our research advances the understanding of the impact of investor sentiment on firms' financing decisions and stock returns.     

Agency costs,taxes and debt: The UK evidence

This paper provides an empirical examination of the impact of the corporation tax and agency costs on firms' capital structure decisions. Our evidence suggests that the agency costs are the main determinants of corporate borrowing. Consistent with the agency theory, we find that firms that have fewer growth options have more debt in their capital structure. Moreover, our results show that debt mitigates the free cash flow problem and that firms that are more likely to be diversified and less prone to bankruptcy are highly geared. the negative effect of insider shareholding on leverage disappears, however; when all the agency mechanisms are accounted for. In addition, we find that, in the long run, companies that are tax exhausted exhibit significantly lower debt ratios than tax-paying firms. However, in the short run, firms' capital structure decisions are not affected by taxation.     

Corporate Debt Maturity and Acquisition Decisions

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of corporate debt maturity on firms’ acquisition decisions using a large sample of acquisitions from 1991 to 2010. We find that firms with shorter debt maturity are less likely to undertake acquisitions. If they do, they are more likely to undertake smaller deals, take more time to complete, are less likely to make all cash offers, and tend to use less cash in the payment. These results support the predictions of the increased liquidity risk hypothesis. We also find that acquirers with shorter debt maturity realize higher announcement returns and experience better long‐term stock returns and operating performance. These results suggest that short debt maturity improves the efficiency of capital allocation through acquisition decisions.     

Voluntary disclosure,ownership structure,and corporate debt maturity: A study of French listed firms

This study examines the effect of voluntary disclosure on corporate debt maturity and the role of ownership structure in this effect. For a sample of 440 French listed firms from 2007 to 2013, the empirical results indicate that firms with greater voluntary disclosure have more long-term debt, suggesting that companies benefit from extensive disclosure through greater access to long-maturity debt. This finding is consistent with the evidence that voluntary disclosure provides an efficient monitoring mechanism in firms where long-term debt could insulate firms from lender scrutiny for long periods. The results also show that the positive association between voluntary disclosure and long-term debt is relevant only when the control rights of the controlling shareholders are significantly in excess of cash-flow rights. This finding supports recent work showing that better disclosure policies are viewed more positively by the market in environments where the risk of wealth expropriation by dominant shareholders is higher.     

Debt Maturity Structure and Accounting Conservatism

This study examines the association between debt maturity structure and accounting conservatism. Short‐maturity debt can mitigate agency costs of debt arising from information asymmetry and suboptimal investment problems inherent in debt financing. As such, debt‐contracting demand for accounting conservatism is expected to be lower in the presence of more short‐maturity debt. We find that short‐maturity debt is negatively associated with accounting conservatism. As firms could commit to more accounting conservatism to gain access to long‐maturity debt, we conduct lead‐lag tests of the direction of causality, and the results suggest that more short‐maturity debt leads to less conservative reporting, rather than the reverse. We also find the negative relation between short‐maturity debt and accounting conservatism is more pronounced among financially distressed firms, where ex ante severity of agency costs of debt are higher. Collectively, our results contribute to our understanding of the role of accounting conservatism in debt contracting and show how debt maturity, a key and pervasive feature of creditor protection in debt contracting, affects accounting conservatism.