Mohammad M. Rahaman

Management quality and the cost of debt: Does management matter to lenders?

This paper investigates the effect of organizational capital, typified by various management practices within a firm, on the cost of external debt financing. Using a sample of medium-sized manufacturing firms in the US, we find that better management practices enhance a firm’s external financing capacity by lowering the firm’s cost of bank loans. We do not find any evidence that the lower loan cost of a high-quality-management firm is associated with more restrictive non-price contract terms such as greater collateral requirements and stricter covenants. These results suggest that banks explicitly take into account the risk arising from poor management practices when pricing and designing debt contracts.

Bank Loan Contracting and Corporate Diversification: Does Organizational Structure Matter to Lenders?

This paper investigates the effect of corporate diversification on the pricing of bank-loan contracts. We find that diversified firms have significantly lower loan rates than comparable focused firms, and we find no evidence that diversified firms are subject to more restrictive non-price contract terms pertaining to maturity, collateral requirements, and covenant restrictions. We show that the effect of diversification on the cost of a bank loan is channeled primarily through coinsurance in investment opportunities and cash flows and that the effect is nonlinear: as the extent of corporate diversification grows, the cost-reduction benefit of diversification decreases. Our results indicate that the organizational structure of the firm can alleviate its external financing constraints and that it has an important bearing on the firm’s financing capacity.

The Market for CEOs: An Empirical Analysis

We investigate empirically a market-based explanation for the rise in recent years in external CEO hiring and compensation. Consistent with the market-based theory, we find that firms in industries relying on general managerial skills are more likely to hire CEOs externally than firms in industries relying less on such skills. We show that firms relying on internal CEOs have on average higher profits than external-CEO firms and that the difference in profits decreases as general skills become more important in the industry. We relate managerial skills to compensation and show that CEO general skills induce better firm performance and higher compensation.

How Do CEOs Create Value for Their Firms

Do CEOs really matter for firm performance? And if they do, how does CEO human capital translate into firm value? We investigate these questions using a sample of firms with CEO turnover. We find that when a CEO with more general managerial human capital is matched with a firm relying more on such skills, the firm reduces leverage and invests less in intangibles, relative to firms relying on CEOs with more firm-specific skills. These changes in firm financing and investment policies lower business risk and reduce the costs associated with financial distress, which, in turn, manifest into higher firm value. Our results suggest that CEOs do matter for firm performance, and illustrate possible channels through which CEO human capital can translate into higher firm value.

Do Managerial Behaviors Trigger Firm Exit? The Case of Hyperactive Bidders

This paper investigates the effects of managerial mergers- and acquisitions-related investment strategies on the exit risk of firms. Using a sample of hyperactive bidders, I show that managerial excessive acquisitiveness can precipitate firm exit. Overbidding is associated with weak corporate governance and lower disclosure quality within firms. I find that hyperactive bidders take more risk compared to conservative bidders. Such bidders also misallocate firms’ resources and dent firms’ reputational capital. Eventually, the external corporate control market is more effective compared to mechanisms such as bankruptcy reorganization, forced liquidation, leveraged buy-out, and expulsion from stock exchanges in disciplining hyperactive bidders by turning them into targets of takeover. These results suggest that a hyper acquisition-induced growth strategy is, on average, detrimental to the long-term survivability of firms and that the internal and external corporate-control mechanisms may not be effective enough to forestall falling value of an excessively acquisitive firm.

Booms, Busts, and Firm Exit: Evidence from M&A Activities Across Business Cycles

Our paper investigates a corporations mergers and acquisitions (M&A) investment decisions across business cycles and their impact on the firms involuntary exit hazard in a recession. We find that firms that concentrate most of their M&A activities in the good times (economic expansions) exit more often in a subsequent recession than firms that distribute M&A investment decisions to non-expansionary times. The increase in the probability of exit for those firms that make one standard deviation more M&A bids than an average firm in the sample would cause a one notch downgrade in ratings, assuming they are AAA firms. We show that the heightened exit hazard of expansionary bidders in recessions is transmitted through a channel of agency cost of overvalued equity, increased business risk and reduced firm efficiency. Our results suggest that a cleansing effect of recession is at work in the business sector and firms need to examine carefully their investment policies in good times to cushion against involuntary exit in bad times.

Supply-Chain Flexibility and the Cost of Debt: Evidence from Uncertainty Shocks

Using comprehensive bank-loan contract information, we show that the power of a firm relative to its suppliers eases its terms of bank financing, specifically through lower loan prices and less restrictive non-price contract terms. Our results are robust to controlling for product-market competition. Supply chain power enables the firm to achieve a greater level of control over its inventory, constituting a significant portion of the reduction in its overall loan cost. We argue that it is important to consider supply-chain related issues when analyzing the external-financing capacity of firms.