Corporate Failures and the Denomination of Corporate Bonds : Evidence from Emerging Asian Economies Over Two Financial Crises

Using a novel financial data-set which covers an extensive time period between 1995-2012, we test for the impact of currency denomination of bonds on Asian firms' survival probabilities. Our data span two financial crises: the 1997-98 Asian crisis and the 2007-09 global financial crisis. We find that during the former crisis firms with foreign currency denominated bonds face a higher probability of failure compared to firms with domestic bonds. On the other extreme, we find no notable differences between the 2007-09 financial crisis and tranquil times for both domestic and foreign issuers