Teodora Paligorova

Bank Loans for Private and Public Firms in a Liquidity Crunch

Bank reliance on short-term funding has increased over time. While an effective source of financing in good times, the 2007 financial crisis has exposed the vulnerability of banks and ultimately firms to such a liability structure. We show that banks dependent on wholesale funding contracted their lending the greatest during the crisis. Our results suggest, however, that in the financial crisis vulnerable banks passed the liquidity shock only to public firms and not to private firms. Loans to private firms were affected through a different channel, largely through higher retained shares by lead arrangers. Consistent with standard models of financial intermediation with information asymmetry, vulnerable banks increased their monitoring of informationally opaque firms for which the potential for informational rents is the highest.

Non-Bank Investors and Loan Renegotiations

We document that the structure of syndicates affects loan renegotiations. Lead banks with large retained shares have positive effects on renegotiations. In contrast, more diverse syndicates deter renegotiations, but only for credit lines. The former result can be explained with coordination theories. The puzzling effect of syndicate diversity in term loan renegotiations derives from the growth of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) in the syndicated loan market and the coordination between these vehicles and lead banks. CLOs that have a relationship with the lead bank of the renegotiated loan are strong supporters of amount-increase renegotiations, arguably because this gives them access to attractive investments. Related CLOs fund not only their portion of the loan increase, but also the portion that was supposed to be funded by the lead bank. Our findings highlight the previously unrecognized role of the growing presence of non-bank lenders in corporate lending.

The Effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on CEO Pay for Luck

According to the rent-extraction hypothesis, weak corporate governance allows entrenched CEOs to capture the pay-setting process and benefit from events outside of their control -- get paid for luck. In this paper, I find that the independence requirement imposed on boards of directors by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), together with the governance regulations subsequently introduced by stock exchanges, affects CEO pay structure. In firms whose corporate boards were originally less independent, and thus more affected by these provisions, CEO pay for performance strengthened while pay for luck decreased after adopting SOX. In contrast, those firms that exhibited strong board independence prior to SOX showed little evidence of pay for luck and little change in pay for performance following the adoption of SOX. The results are consistent with the rent-extraction hypothesis, and they are robust to alternative explanations such as asymmetric benchmarks, oligopoly, and managerial talent.