The Impact of Liquidity on Debt Maturity After a Financial Crisis: Evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council Region

This article contributes to the existent literature on corporate debt maturity by studying a new channel through which firms may mitigate the effects of a major economic downturn such as the 2008 global financial crisis. More specifically, using a sample of 208 listed firms in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, we find that an increase in firms’ current ratios after the crisis is associated with an increase in long-term financing. We also find that a financially constrained firm can still access long-term financing if its current ratio after the crisis is beyond a specific threshold. Additionally, we highlight the differences in the typical drivers of debt structure between GCC countries and industries.     

An empirical analysis of corporate debt maturity structure

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the maturity structure of corporate debt. A dynamic model is estimated by GMM estimation procedure using data for an unbalanced panel of 429 non-financial UK firms over the period of 1983–96. The evidence provides strong support for the hypotheses that firms with more growth opportunities in their investment sets tend to have more shorter-term debt and firm size exerts a negative impact on debt maturity structure. The results also support the maturity-matching hypothesis that firms match the maturity structure of their debt to the maturity of their assets. There is less support for the view that firms use their debt maturity structure to signal information to the market. We do not find evidence for a negative correlation between taxes and debt maturity. Our results also suggest that firms have long-term target ratios and they adjust to the target ratio relatively fast, which might indicate that the costs of being away from target ratios are significant for firms.     

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.     

减税政策对小微企业债务期限结构的影响

本文主要探讨减税政策对小微企业债务期限结构的影响。理论上,减税政策对企业债务期限结构产生两种方向相反的效果:一是减税后企业盈利状况改善,激励银行通过延长债务期限以争取企业客户;二是减税后企业可支配现金流增加,加剧银行与企业间的委托代理问题,促使银行缩短债务期限以便加强企业监督。本文以所得税减半征收政策作为自然实验,基于全国税收调查数据库(2010-2015)考察了减税政策对小微企业债务期限结构的影响。实证结果显示:减税后企业的债务期限整体得以延长;如果减税后企业的盈利状况改善更多,或可支配现金流增长更缓,企业债务期限延长幅度更大。此外,本文发现在快速扩张行业、有产能过剩风险行业以及房地产上下游关联行业中的企业往往会因为较强的代理成本效应而面临减税后债务期限的边际缩短。本文研究结论对改善企业融资结构,特别对提高小微企业获取中长期贷款能力,有一定的参考意义。     

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 Structure: Evidence from France,Germany and the UK

We examine the determinants of the debt maturity structure of French, German and British firms. These countries represent different financial and legal traditions that may have implications on corporate debt maturity structure. Our model incorporates the factors representing three major theories (tax considerations, liquidity and signalling, and contracting costs) of debt maturity. It also controls for capital market conditions. The results confirm the applicability of most theories of debt maturity structure for the UK firms. However, the evidence from France and Germany are mixed. Overall the findings suggest that the debt maturity structure of a firm is determined by firm‐specific factors and the country's financial systems and institutional traditions in which it operates.     

Managerial ability and debt maturity

We examine whether and how managerial ability affects corporate debt maturity decisions. The demand for shorter maturity debt is expected to be higher in firms operated by high-ability managers, who possess the superior skills needed to anticipate firms’ economic prospects and communicate their private information, thereby alleviating information asymmetry and bolstering their reputation. We document that firms with high ability managers are associated with more short-term debt financing. The effect becomes stronger for firms facing severe information asymmetry problems, unconstrained firms or high quality firms. Supportive evidence is found from the analysis of short- and long-term debt issuance activity. Our findings remain robust to alternative measures of managerial ability and debt maturity choice, and are not driven by omitted variable bias, endogeneity concerns or industry group. Overall, we provide robust evidence that supports the signalling theory for debt maturity structure and contributes to the literatures on managerial ability.     

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.     

How common are credit-less recoveries? Firm-level evidence on the role of financial markets in crisis recovery

We study firm recoveries from systemic sudden stops in developing countries, where firms' cash flows suffer exogenous shocks. Contrary to macro studies suggesting that output recovery precedes that of the financial sector, firm-level data shows that only in less than a third of firms, operating cash flows recover without a recovery in external credit, and even these firms have access to other sources of cash. Specifically, firms with high prior short-term debt exposure do experience a sharp reduction in short-term credit but increase operating cash flows during a crisis. Firms with high prior cash holdings experience negative cash flows and deplete their cash holdings. Thus, firms' financial prepositioning predicts recovery in cash flows and is consistent with trade-off theories of capital structure and with precautionary motives for cash holdings. We find no support for the maturity mismatch hypothesis, which predicts that firms with high short-term debt should have harder recoveries post crisis.     

Corporate debt maturity in the MENA region: Does institutional quality matter?

We investigate corporate debt maturity structure in the MENA region and its firm and institutional determinants using a sample of 444 listed firms over the 2003–2011 period, or 3717 firm-year observations. We find a very limited use of long-term debt by MENA firms; long-term debt represents only 3.41% of the typical MENA firm's total debt, which is much less than what is reported in prior literature on other parts of the world. Consistent with the predictions of debt maturity theories and prior empirical findings, we find that leverage, firm size, and asset tangibility are positively associated with the use of more long-term debt while firms facing a higher risk of default tend to use more short-term debt. In addition, we find that better quality institutions lead to the use of more long-term debt in MENA. Specifically, stronger rule of law, better regulatory effectiveness, better legal protection of creditors, and more developed financial intermediaries are associated with greater use of long-term borrowing by MENA firms. Our findings have important policy implications as they illuminate the path toward needed reforms that would enhance MENA firms' access to long-term debt, which may ultimately result in more private investment and jobs.     

Does geopolitical uncertainty affect corporate financing? Evidence from MIDAS regression

This paper investigates the effect of geopolitical uncertainty on (market) leverage ratio, debt maturity, and choice of debt source. Using a new monthly index of geopolitical uncertainty and annual data for corporate financing variables, we find that under geopolitical uncertainty firms tend to reduce debt and increase market leverage. We argue that this increase is driven by asymmetrical reductions in the numerator (total debt) and the denominator (total debt and equity) of the leverage ratio. Under geopolitical uncertainty, firms tend to shorten their debt maturity structure and—especially those firms with lower credit quality—to substitute bank debt for public debt.     

中国上市公司债务期限结构特征的实证检验

本文采用描述性统计、混合最小二乘、参数和非参数检验等方法对中国上市公司的债务期限结构特征进行了系统分析。研究发现，中国上市公司的债务期限相对较低，中国受管制行业的债务期限相对高于其他行业，不同行业和不同地区之间的债务期限存在显著性差异．这些差异大部分归属于行业差异和地区差异而不是年度差异。总的说来，债务期限9．53％的变异能由行业类别加以解释，4．15％的变异能由地区虚拟变量加以解释。     

Are U.S. firms using more short-term debt?

We show that, despite the sharp but temporary decline around the financial crisis of 2007–08, corporate debt maturity has risen significantly in the last two decades, erasing much of the secular decline from the 1980–90s documented in the literature. The reversal in debt maturity trend is driven by the rise in the use of intermediate-term debt among medium and large-sized firms. The low interest rates observed in the last two decades and the decline in the demand for long-term corporate bonds partly explains the rise in intermediate-term debt.     

The global financial crisis and the capital structure of firms: Was the impact more severe among SMEs and non-listed firms?

Using a dataset covering about 276,998 firms across 75 countries over the period 2004–2011, this paper examines the short-run evolution of firms' capital structures following the start of the global financial crisis and its immediate aftermath, comparing the experience of already levered SMEs, large non-listed firms, and listed companies. We find that firm leverage and debt maturity declined both in advanced economies and in developing countries, even in those that did not experience a crisis. The deleveraging and maturity reduction were particularly significant for non-listed firms, including both SMEs as well as large non-listed companies. For SMEs, these effects were larger in countries with less efficient legal systems, weaker information sharing mechanisms, less developed financial sectors, and with more restrictions on bank entry. In contrast, there is weaker evidence of a significant decline in leverage and debt maturity among listed companies which are typically much larger than other firms and likely to benefit from the “spare tire” of easier access to capital market financing. Though our results are robust to many changes in sample and specification, we cannot rule out that survivorship bias and attrition could affect our estimates to some degree.     

Some Evidence on the Uniqueness of Initial Public Debt Offerings

Debt initial public offerings (IPOs) represent a major shift in a firm's financing policy by both extending debt maturity and altering the public-private debt mix. In contrast to findings for seasoned debt offerings, we document a significantly negative stock price response to debt IPO announcements. This result is consistent with debt maturity and debt ownership structure theories. The equity wealth effect is negatively related to the offer's maturity, and positively related to the degree of bank monitoring. We find that firms with less information asymmetry and firms with higher growth opportunities experience a less adverse stock price response.     

RISKY DEBT MATURITY CHOICE IN A SEQUENTIAL GAME EQUILIBRIUM

In this paper the choice of risky debt maturity structure is analyzed in a sequential game framework. The focus is on the set of viable equilibria when there are no transaction costs associated with the choice of debt maturity structure. It is shown that when changes in firm value are independent over time, both short- and long-term debt pooling are Nash sequential equilibrium outcomes. However, only the short-term debt pooling outcome satisfies the universal divinity refinement. Relaxing the assumption of independent changes in firm value, it is demonstrated that a separating equilibrium in which higher-quality firms issue short-term debt and low-quality firms issue long-term debt may exist. Furthermore, conditions exist under which long-term debt pooling is the universally divine outcome.     

Debt Maturity Structure and Firm Investment

This study shows that the maturity structure of a firm's debt has a significant impact on its investment decisions. We show, after controlling for the effect of the overall level of leverage, that a higher percentage of long-term debt in total debt significantly reduces investment for firms with high growth opportunities. In contrast, the correlation between debt maturity and investment is not significant for firms with low growth opportunities. The results are strong at the firm level and at the business segment level. These results hold even after controlling for the endogeneity problem inherent in the relationship between total leverage, the maturity composition of leverage, and investment.     

Labor protection and corporate Debt maturity: International evidence

This paper investigates the impact of labor protection on corporate debt maturity structure. We hypothesize that stronger labor protection is conducive to a greater use of short-term debt maturity by firms. Using various country-level indicators as measures of labor protection, and a sample of 114,594 firm-years from 43 countries over the 1990–2010 period, we document robust evidence that firms located in countries where labor enjoys a strong protection tend to borrow more short-term. Our analysis suggests that labor protection is an important institutional factor that plays a role in determining the maturity structure of corporate debt over-and-above economic, legal, and political factors identified in prior research.     

A Gap‐Filling Theory of Corporate Debt Maturity Choice

We argue that time variation in the maturity of corporate debt arises because firms behave as macro liquidity providers, absorbing the supply shocks associated with changes in the maturity structure of government debt. We document that when the government funds itself with more short‐term debt, firms fill the resulting gap by issuing more long‐term debt, and vice versa. This type of liquidity provision is undertaken more aggressively: (1) when the ratio of government debt to total debt is higher and (2) by firms with stronger balance sheets. Our theory sheds new light on market timing phenomena in corporate finance more generally.     

Determinants of corporate debt maturity in South America: Do institutional quality and financial development matter?

We test whether a country's level of financial development or institutional quality (or both) has a first‐order effect on corporate debt maturity decisions on a sample of 359 non-financial firms from five South American countries over a 12‐year period. We find that there is a substantial dynamic component in the determination of a firm's debt maturity, and firms face moderate adjustment frictions toward their optimal maturities. More importantly, the level of financial development does not influence debt maturity, whereas the institutional quality of a country has a significant positive effect on the level of long-term debt in a firm's financial structure. Our results support the hypothesis that the quality of national institutions is an important determinant of corporate financing in general and of debt maturity in particular.