We study a unique experiment to examine the importance of rating agencies' private information for bank shareholders …. On July 20, 2011, Fitch Ratings refined their bank standalone ratings, which measure intrinsic financial strength, from a … standalone rating refinement was cleanly limited to bank shareholders. We find evidence suggesting that the refinement resulted …

associated with loan terms, we document that longer firm-bank relationships deepen private information often strongly nonlinear … firms, smaller, leveraged, and illiquid banks, at longer firm-bank distances, and during non-COVID times. …