The pricing of deposit insurance considering bankruptcy costs and closure policies

The paper aims to study the pricing issue of deposit insurance with explicit consideration of bankruptcy costs and closure policies. Full coverage from deposit insurance is imposed by many regulators to stabilize the banking system in the current financial crisis, despite of the potential moral hazard problems. We argue that bankruptcy cost is an important factor in pricing deposit insurance, especially when the insured institution is insolvent. Applying the isomorphic relationship between deposit insurance and put option, we first derive a closed-form solution for the pricing model with bankruptcy costs and closure policies. Then, we modify the barrier option approach to price the deposit insurance in which the bankruptcy cost is set as a function of asset return volatility and more realistic closure policies considering possible forbearance can be accounted for. The properties of the models are supported by numerical simulations and are consistent with the risk-based pricing scheme.     

新《企业破产法》对银行信贷业务的影响及对策

相对于旧<企业破产法>而言,2007年6月1日施行的新<企业破产法>扩大了适用范围,明晰了破产条件,健全了破产法律责任追究制度,规定了跨境破产,调整了破产财产范围和债权的清偿顺序,新设了管理人、重整和撤销权等制度,新<企业破产法>的实施对银行信贷业务产生了重大影响.本文通过对新旧<企业破产法>进行比较,详细分析了新<企业破产法>的实施对银行信贷业务产生的影响,有针对性地提出了风险防范对策:正确选定融资对象,防范关联风险;严控贷款用途,关注借款及国家宏观调控政策的重大变化;全面掌握债务人财产状况;依法监督管理人行为等.     

Impaired bank health and default risk

Empirical studies in corporate finance have long been focused on the role of banks in reducing the costs of financial distress. The environment and events in Japan provide a “natural experiment” that allows such empirical studies. The number of bankruptcies steadily increased throughout the 1990s, and peaked in 2000. During this period, Japan's banking sector, in contrast, faced considerable problems regarding the disposal of their bad loans. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how various measures of bank health and how defaults of major trading partners affected the probability of bankruptcy among medium-size firms in Japan. Using probit models, we examine the causes of bankruptcy for unlisted Japanese companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We find that several measures of bank-specific financial health have had significant impacts on a borrower's probability of bankruptcy, even when observable characteristics relating to these borrower's financial variables are controlled. In particular, a close bank–firm relationship—which usually reduces the probability of bankruptcy—exacerbates the impacts of a financial crisis, which substantially damages other bank health measures as well.     

The effect of banking relationships on the future of financially distressed firms

In this study I empirically examine U.S. publicly traded firms to determine the impact of banking relationships on the future of financially distressed firms. Results demonstrate that obtaining a relationship-backed loan in the six months prior to distress identification significantly increases the probability of future firm emergence from distress. However, this effect decreases as the severity of firm distress increases. These results are robust to variations in banking relationship measures and to addressing endogeneity. This study provides evidence consistent with the value of lending relationships stemming from the ease of transmission of “soft” information within the lender's organization.     

Too big to fail in banking: What does it mean?

Interest in too big to fail (TBTF) resolutions of insolvent large complex financial firms has intensified in recent years. TBTF resolutions protect some in-the-money counterparties of a targeted insolvent firm from losses that they would suffer if the usual bankruptcy resolution regimes used in resolving other firms in the industry were applied. Although special TBTF resolution regimes may reduce the collateral spill-over costs of the failure, the combined direct and indirect costs from such “bailouts” may be large and often financed in part or in total by taxpayers. Thus, TBTF has become a major public policy issue that has not been resolved in part because of disagreements about definitions and thereby the estimates of the benefits and costs. This paper explores these differences and develops a framework for standardizing the definitions and evaluating the desirability of TBTF resolutions more accurately.     

Corporate valuation and the resolution of bank insolvency in East Asia

We examine the valuation effect of the resolution of a bank’s insolvency on commercial clients. Our sample includes 29 insolvent banks in Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand that serve as main creditors for 269 publicly traded companies. Our findings suggest that a bank relationship adds value to a firm, and that this value depends on investors’ certainty in the continuity of the banking relationship. Significant cumulative returns for 50 days following the event date suggest that the type of resolution has real effects on the performance of related firms above initial expectations.     

Learning from a rival bank and lending boom

When bankers observe a rival winning in the interbank competition for lending to a firm, they infer that the firm may be more promising than they had thought. From this consideration, they loosen their creditworthiness tests and lower the interest rates they offer in the next lending competition for the firm. Increased interbank competition reduces the impact of this observational learning and decreases the credit risk taken by each bank because of a severe winner's curse, while it increases the aggregate risk taken by the entire banking sector.     

Do corporate payouts signal going-concern risk for auditors? Evidence from audit reports for companies in financial distress

We examine the association between payout policy changes and going-concern decisions for financially distressed clients. Extant auditing standards indicate that payout reductions, which offer a prospect of short-term cash relief, can potentially mitigate going-concern uncertainty, whereas economic theory suggests payout decreases (increases) convey mixed but mostly negative (positive) signals about a company’s future financial status. We find that, compared with a bankruptcy prediction model over short (not to exceed 1 year) and long (2–3 years) horizons, auditors seem to significantly underreact to payout decreases (i.e., negative signals) but react appropriately to payout increases (i.e., positive signals) in their going-concern decisions. Moreover, auditors are three times more likely to make Type II misclassification errors in payout-decreasing firms than in payout-increasing and no-change firms. We also find that auditors take longer to determine the appropriate opinion for clients with payout changes, especially for those who cut their payouts. Overall, our findings suggest that auditors respond differently to positive and negative signals about companies’ future prospects, reflecting the mixed nature of payout decreases relative to payout increases and the professional standards’ emphasis on the prospect of short-term cash relief from payout reductions.     

Implications of Debt Renegotiation for Optimal Bank Policy and Firm Behavior

This paper analyzes the problems associated with the renegotiation of debt contracts involving a bank (the lender) and a firm (the borrower) when the latter is operated by a risk averse manager. Firms undertake risky projects with loan capital borrowed from the bank. When a firm cannot pay off a loan it is technically bankrupt. Both the borrower and the lender may however experience a Pareto-improvement in their positions by renegotiating the loan. By renegotiating the terms of the debt the financially distressed firm can avoid the stigmatization of bankruptcy and the bank can avoid the costs of seizing the borrower's assets. However, our main finding is that, from the bank's point of view, renegotiating as a policy of recovering loan payments may be inefficient in practice because of false bankruptcy claims and moral hazard problems associated with exposure of the borrowing firm to the risk of default. We present a solution to the false bankruptcy claim problem that involves a mixe d strategy between asset seizure by the bank and debt renegotiation.     

The choice between informal and formal restructuring: The case of French banks facing distressed SMEs

This empirical paper investigates the paths leading to the resolution of financial distress for a sample of small and medium-sized French firms in default, focusing in particular on their decisions between bankruptcy and informal (out-of-court) renegotiations. The procedure is depicted as a sequential game in which stakeholders first decide whether to engage in an informal renegotiation. Second, conditional on opting for renegotiation, the debtor and its creditors may succeed or fail in reaching an agreement to restructure the firm’s capital structure. We test different hypotheses that capture (i) coordination and bargaining power issues, (ii) informational problems, (iii) firm characteristics, and (iv) loan characteristics. The empirical implementation is based on sequential LOGIT regressions. First, we find that the likelihood of informal renegotiations increases with loan size and the proportion of long-term debt. These two results support the argument that size matters when deciding whether to opt for informal renegotiation. Second, the probability of a successful renegotiation decreases when (i) the bank in charge of handling the process is the debtor’s “main” creditor and when (ii) the firm is badly rated and its management is considered faulty. Third, the estimations show that collateral plays a significant role in the first stage of the renegotiation process. However, it does not impact the likelihood of success in reaching a renegotiated agreement. Finally, some banks are clearly better than others at leading successful renegotiation processes.     

银行业改革、市场化与信贷资源的配置

鉴于我国资本市场弱法律风险和股权高度集中的基本特征,本文提出了一个分析我国银行信贷业务预期违约风险的基本框架。以此为基础,本文考察了我国的银行业改革以及市场化进程对银行信贷资源配置行为的影响。研究发现,银行配置信贷资源时,会认真考虑贷款企业的历史财务绩效和代理成本。并且,银行业改革和地区市场化进程都成功促进了银行信贷资源配置行为的商业化。本文的研究为评价银行业改革的历史进程提供了经验证据,也为进一步的努力方向提供了一些有益的线索。一方面,银行在配置其信贷资源时不仅要进一步关注贷款企业的财务绩效;另一方面,也应当致力于促使银行在确立必要报酬率时进一步关注贷款企业的代理成本。     

STOCK MARKET PERCEPTION OF INDUSTRIAL FIRM BANKRUPTCY

The objectives of this study are to determine (1) when the stock market first perceives the impending bankruptcy of a potentially bankrupt firm and (2) what firm-specific factors explain the interval between the perception time and the eventual date of bankruptcy (i.e., market lead time). A computational methodology based on the Hillmer-Yu technique is used to determine the month in which a structural change in the mean and variance of monthly stock return occurs for a potentially bankrupt firm. This parametric change month or the “market perception time” is computed for a sample of 47 industrial firms. The range of market lead times cautions against the common assumption of a uniform event period in event studies. The lead time interval (for both the mean and variance of monthly market return) of poteintially bankrupt firms is found to be positively related to the firm's earnings per share at the time of stock market perception of eventual bankruptcy. Neither the firm's asset size nor systematic risk appear to be significant indicators of lead time interval. Also, change in investment at market perception time is positively related to percentage change in the market lead times. This suggests that innovations in the investment variable are a source of new information to the security market in assesing the probability of future bankruptcy of a firm.     

Convertible Securities and Bankruptcy Reforms: Addressing Too Big to Fail and Reducing the Fragility of the Financial System*

Eliminating too big to fail should be the first priority of any regulatory reform. But this is easier said than done. As the crisis has taught us, when the systemic risks are perceived to be large, regulators will be very reluctant to close down insolvent firms or impose losses on creditors. So how do we reduce these risks so that regulators can credibly commit to a policy of allowing financial companies to fail and not resort to rescues or bailouts? The author proposes two complementary approaches to this problem: The first is to design capital structures with corrective mechanisms that kick in when a financial firm displays signs of trouble, but still has positive economic capital. To this end, the author endorses the Squam Lake Report's proposal that encourages financial firms to issue convertible debt with an “automatic” provision for converting to equity. In contrast to the Squam Lake proposal, however, the author argues that the conversion to equity should not depend on regulators' decisions and should take place before individual banks and the financial system are in full crisis mode. The second approach is to design a resolution mechanism that will close failing financial firms when early intervention has not led to the firm's recovery. The author argues that the best model for this mechanism is bankruptcy, because of its resolution of claims according to predetermined rules rather than regulatory discretion. However, certain forms of early intervention can also help to lower the costs of permitting firms to fail. For example, the Squam Lake idea that financial institutions be required to develop living wills should make it easier to unwind these firms in an orderly fashion and provide regulators with insight into the degree of systemic risk that these firms impose. The author notes that the challenges associated with getting the executives of healthy banks to plan for their own bankruptcy may indicate that a better use of regulatory resources might be to view the living will as one of the tools of prompt corrective action for firms that become undercapitalized but are still solvent. Once a firm has been declared undercapitalized, regulators would have greater bargaining power to insist on a serious plan for bankruptcy.     

Self‐Fulfilling Prophecies of Failure: The Endogenous Balance Sheets of Distressed Companies

This article analyses a problem at the intersection of accounting, law, and economics: the economically efficient operation of legal arrangements for company failure is undermined because valuations of assets and liabilities become unstable once a firm is distressed. The paper draws on the three disciplines to show the pivotal role of asset and liability valuations in answering the legal question, whether the firm is insolvent, and the economic question, whether the firm should fail and its assets be redeployed to an alternative use. U.S. and U.K. evidence reveals a disconcerting indeterminacy in these processes: the probability that a firm will fail affects significantly the valuations assigned to assets and liabilities; but at the same time the valuation of assets and liabilities itself determines the probability of failure. This balance sheet endogeneity is then shown to delay economically efficient management changes under debtor‐oriented U.S. Chapter 11, and to induce unnecessary costly bankruptcy with creditor‐oriented U.K. receivership/administration. Recent cases trace this endogeneity in failures involving often controversial countermanding of huge financial claims.     

Does pre‐packed bankruptcy create value? An empirical study of postbankruptcy employment retention in The Netherlands

In recent years, there has been growing interest in whether pre‐packed bankruptcy can be a mechanism through which firms facing imminent insolvency can preserve value. Although an extensive body of literature exists on “pre‐packs,” whether such techniques really preserve value remains ambiguous. By analysing bankruptcy proceedings filed with Dutch courts in the period 2012–2018 through the lenses of real options and debt overhang theory, we examined employment retention postbankruptcy as a consequence of the type of bankruptcy proceeding (pre‐packed bankruptcy and conventional bankruptcy) and the severity of prebankruptcy financial distress. The results show that in the Netherlands, a pre‐packed bankruptcy, when compared with a conventional bankruptcy proceeding, positively impacts employment retention rates after bankruptcy. The severity of financial distress before bankruptcy does not affect employment retention rates postbankruptcy. This implies that despite the amount of resource slack, the preservation of employee value is better served under a pre‐packed bankruptcy than a conventional bankruptcy proceeding. This finding is important for insolvency practice, as up to 22 June 2017, employee rights in the Netherlands (including redundancy) were not considered to be automatically transferred to the firm acquiring the bankrupt debtor's assets when a pre‐packed bankruptcy was applied. Implications for insolvency regulation and practice are discussed.     

Hurdles to debt relief for “no income no assets” debtors in Germany: A case study of failed consumer bankruptcy law reforms

Given that many overindebted households have low or no assets and income, governments have increasingly tried to adapt their consumer bankruptcy regimes to the needs and capacities of these NINA (“no income, no assets”) debtors. Most notably, since the mid‐2000s, some countries from the Anglosphere have created low‐cost, means‐tested, and administrative (i.e., nonjudicial) debt relief procedures as alternative to traditional bankruptcy for NINA debtors. By contrast, in some European countries such as Germany, legislators have tried—but until today failed—to create efficient debt relief measures for NINA debtors. This contribution aims to make English‐speaking readers familiar with the history of consumer insolvency law in Germany, with a focus on legislative developments regarding NINA debtors, and to identify actors, institutions, and ideas that have contributed—especially during the 2000s—to the failure of consumer bankruptcy reforms addressing the main problems of NINA cases in Germany (i.e., high hurdles to relief for debtors, high administrative efforts for trustees and courts, high costs for the public purse, and yet very few payments to creditors). The German case is relevant not only because it is a striking case of failure to adapt a debt relief regime to NINA debtors but also because German consumer bankruptcy law—despite its shortcomings—continues to serve as a template for insolvency law reforms in European and other countries.     

Innovate or die: Corporate innovation and bankruptcy forecasts

We investigate the relationship between a firm’s innovation performance and its probability of bankruptcy. Estimating the discrete hazard model with a comprehensive set of bankruptcies spanning the period of 1980–2009, we find several previously neglected innovation-based variables are important determinants of bankruptcy probability, especially for firms belonging to technology-intensive industries. R&D productivity demonstrates persistent significance across different prediction horizons while the predictive power of patent count becomes larger and more significant at longer prediction horizons. We also find that a firm’s organization capital intensity correlates positively with future bankruptcy.     

The funding of subsidiaries equity,double leverage and the risk of bank holding companies

Banking groups exploit double leverage when ‘debt is issued by the parent company and the proceeds are invested in subsidiaries as equity’. Financial authorities have frequently raised concerns about the issue of double leverage because this type of intra‐firm financing appears to allow for both the arbitrage of capital and the assumption of risk. This article focuses on the relationship between double leverage and risk‐taking within banking groups. First, we discuss this relationship based on an examination of balance sheet figures. Second, we analyze a large sample of United States Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) from 1990–2014. The results show that BHCs are more prone to risk when they increase their double leverage, namely, when the stake of the parent within subsidiaries is larger than the stand‐alone capital of the parent. This paper's primary implication for policymakers is that the regulators of complex financial entities should more efficiently address the issue of double leverage, thereby limiting the potential negative consequences that arise from corporate instability.     

Supply of bank loans and business debts: A view from historical bankruptcy cases

As bank loans fell in the 2008 crisis, business bankruptcy increased. To study how bank loans affect business balance sheets and bankruptcy, we use new data on bankrupt businesses in Missouri between 1898 and 1942. We confirm that when banks curtail loans, courts see more bankruptcies among businesses with high exposure to bank debt. To reduce real volatility, policy‐makers can set tough bank liquidity requirements in the upswing of business cycle but allow weaker requirements in the downswing. We also find that between 1914 and 1933, businesses in St. Louis were more sensitive to changes in bank loans than businesses in Kansas City, probably due to the tight monetary policy conducted by the conservative St. Louis Fed. The Glass‐Steagall Act weakened the relationship between bank loans and business debt structure. The takeaway is that lender‐of‐last‐resort practices stabilize both the financial sector and the real economy.     

Risk-shifting and investment asymmetry

I show that when shareholders can change not only the variance of the future firm value, but also its asymmetry, they can shift costly risk to bondholders while lowering the firm risk, and more importantly, the equity risk and the probability of bankruptcy. The implication of this result is that risk-shifting behavior can be more beneficial to shareholders than currently perceived in the literature.