Steven Ongena

The duration of bank relationships

Abstract We analyze the duration of bank relationships using a unique panel data set of listed firms and their banks from the bank-dominated Norwegian market. We find that firms are more likely to leave a bank as the relationship matures. Small, profitable, and highly leveraged firms maintain shorter bank relationships, as do firms with multiple bank relationships. These findings are robust to censoring, alternate specifications for the distribution of relationship duration, and other control variables relevant to the Norwegian market. Overall, our results cast doubt on theories suggesting that firms become locked into bank relationships.

Hazardous Times for Monetary Policy: What Do Twenty‐Three Million Bank Loans Say About the Effects of Monetary Policy on Credit Risk‐Taking?

We identify the effects of monetary policy on credit risk-taking with an exhaustive credit register of loan applications and contracts. We separate the changes in the composition of the supply of credit from the concurrent changes in the volume of supply and quality, and the volume of demand. We employ a two-stage model that analyzes the granting of loan applications in the first stage and loan outcomes for the applications granted in the second stage, and that controls for both observed and unobserved, time-varying, firm and bank heterogeneity through time*firm and time*bank fixed effects. We find that a lower overnight interest rate induces lowly capitalized banks to grant more loan applications to ex ante risky firms and to commit larger loan volumes with fewer collateral requirements to these firms, yet with a higher ex post likelihood of default. A lower long-term interest rate and other relevant macroeconomic variables have no such effects.

Hazardous Times for Monetary Policy: What Do Twenty-Three Million Bank Loans Say about the Effects of Monetary Policy on Credit Risk-Taking?

We identify the impact of short-term interest rates on credit risk-taking by analyzing a comprehensive credit register from Spain, a country where for the last twenty years monetary policy was mostly decided abroad. Discrete choice, within borrower comparison and duration analyses show that lower overnight rates prior to loan origination lead banks to lend more to borrowers with a worse credit history and to grant more loans with a higher per period probability of default. Lower overnight rates during the life of the loan reduce this probability. Bank, borrower and market characteristics determine the impact of overnight rates on credit risk-taking.

Bank Relationships: A Review

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on bank relationships. We begin with the event study evidence on bank loan announcements and trace our way forward through an overview of papers discussing the benefits and costs of bank relationships. We follow with a review of the evidence on the nature and strength of bank relationships, covering such topics as duration, scope, control, and number of bank relationships. We also discuss the importance of bank relationships for aggregate economic activity.

Macroprudential Policy, Countercyclical Bank Capital Buffers, and Credit Supply: Evidence from the Spanish Dynamic Provisioning Experiments

To study the impact of macroprudential policy on credit supply cycles and real effects, we analyze dynamic provisioning. Introduced in Spain in 2000, revised four times, and tested in its countercyclicality during the crisis, it affected banks differentially. We find that dynamic provisioning smooths credit supply cycles and, in bad times, supports firm performance. A 1 percentage point increase in capital buffers extends credit to firms by 9 percentage points, increasing firm employment (6 percentage points) and survival (1 percentage point). Moreover, there are important compositional effects in credit supply related to risk and regulatory arbitrage by nonregulated and regulated but less affected banks.

To what extent will the banking industry be globalized? a study of bank nationality and reach in 20 European nations

We model two dimensions of bank globalization - bank nationality (a bank from the firms host nation, its home nation, or a third nation) and bank reach (a global, regional, or local bank) - using a two-stage nested multinomial logit model. Our data set includes over 2,000 foreign affiliates of multinational corporations operating in 20 European nations. We find that these firms frequently use host nation banks for cash management services, and that bank reach may be strongly influenced by this choice of bank nationality. Our results suggest limits to the degree of future bank globalization.

Bank Relationships and Firm Profitability

This paper examines how bank relationships affect firm performance. An empirical implication of recent theoretical models is that firms maintaining multiple bank relationships are less profitable than their single-bank peers. We investigate this empirical implication using a data set containing virtually all Norwegian publicly listed firms for the period 1979-1995. We find that profitability is substantially higher if firms maintain only a single bank relationship. We also find that firms replacing a single bank relationship are on average smaller and younger than firms not replacing a single bank relationship.

Who Needs Credit and Who Gets Credit in Eastern Europe

Based on survey data covering 8,387 firms in 20 countries we compare the access to bank credit for firms in Eastern Europe to that in selected Western European countries. Our analysis reveals five main results. First, the firm-level determinants of the propensity to apply are similar in Eastern and Western Europe: small and financially opaque firms as well as firms with alternative financing sources are less likely to apply for credit while firms with greater financing needs (exporters) are more likely to apply. The lower rate of loan applications by firms in Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe seems to be partly driven by the stronger presence of foreign banks and the lower level of credit information sharing. Second, while those firms which do apply for credit are rarely denied credit, foreign bank presence is associated with higher loan rejection rates among small firms. The high loan approval rates observed in Eastern and Western Europe result partly from a selection effect: those firms which are more likely to have an application rejected are less likely to apply in the first place. We find evidence that foreign bank presence is associated with higher loan rejection rates among small and government-owned firms. Third, the reasons why firms do not apply for loans differ strongly between the two regions. In Eastern Europe a higher fraction of non-applicants seem to be discouraged by lending conditions, that is, high interest rates and tough collateral requirements, while in Western Europe more firms simply do not need loans. Fourth, credit constraints in Eastern Europe softened in recent years. Firms which were discouraged from applying for credit or denied credit in 2005 were more likely to have a loan in 2008 than to still be credit constrained, especially in countries with better credit information sharing. Finally, credit constraints do affect firm performance in Eastern Europe. In particular, firms which are denied credit or discouraged from applying are less likely to invest in R&D and introduce new products.

'Lending by Example': Direct and Indirect Effects of Foreign Banks in Emerging Markets

Using a novel dataset that allows us to trace the bank relationships of a sample of mostly unlisted firms, we explore which borrowers are able to benefit from foreign bank presence in emerging markets. Our results suggest that the limits to financial integration are less tight than the static picture of firm-bank relationships implies. Even though foreign banks are more likely to engage large and foreign-owned firms, after an acquisition, a bank is 20 percent less likely to terminate a relationship with a firm if the acquirer is foreign rather than domestic. Most importantly, within a credit market, firms appear to have the same access to financial loans and ability to invest whether they borrow from a foreign bank or not, while foreign banks benefit all firms by indirectly enhancing credit access.

Credit supply: identifying balance-sheet channels with loan applications and granted loans

To identify credit availability we analyze the extensive and intensive margins of lending with loan applications and all loans granted in Spain. We find that during the period analyzed both worse economic and tighter monetary conditions reduce loan granting, especially to firms or from banks with lower capital or liquidity ratios. Moreover, responding to applications for the same loan, weak banks are less likely to grant the loan. Our results suggest that firms cannot offset the resultant credit restriction by turning to other banks. Importantly the bank-lending channel is notably stronger when we account for unobserved time-varying firm heterogeneity in loan demand and quality.