This paper brings together two seemingly unrelated branches of the literature that focuses on different aspects of a bank's interaction with its borrowers: the relative priority of bank debt, and the role of banks as quot;relationship lendersquot;. Specifically, we show that bank seniority plays...

The advent of the euro has eroded many of the barriers that segmented the European corporate bond market along currency lines and given rise to a unified market comparable in size to the one denominated in US dollars. In doing so, the new currency has made it easier for investment banks to...

When supervisors have imperfect information about the soundness of banks, they may be unaware of insolvency problems that develop in the interval between on-site examinations. Supervising banks more often will alleviate this problem but will increase the costs of supervision. This paper analyzes...

This paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of mixing banking and commerce, using the quot;liquidityquot; approach to financial intermediation. Bringing a nonfinancial firm into a banking conglomerate may be advantageous because it may make it easier for the bank to dispose of assets...

Our results show that the majority of firms borrow for the first time from a single bank, but soon afterwards some of them start borrowing from several banks. Duration analysis shows that the likelihood of a firm substituting a single with multiple relationships increases with the duration of...