Do Banks Extract Informational Rents Through Collateral?

The use of collateral is one of the defining characteristics of loan contracts. This paper investigates if relationship lending and market concentration allow for informational rent extraction through collateral. We use equity IPO data as informational shocks that erode rent-seeking opportunities. Using a new loan-level database for China, we find that collateral incidence increases with relationship intensity and banking market concentration for loans obtained pre-IPO, while this effect is more moderate post-IPO. We also show that the degree of rent extraction declines for lower-risk firms post-IPO, while it increases for higher-risk firms. These results are not driven by differences or changes in firm-specific financial risks. To our knowledge, our paper is the first to investigate the determinants of collateral for China using loan-level data