Ratings measure the counterparty risk for an issuer or an issue while CDs are a market evaluation of the same risk exposure. The market evaluation could be not aligned with the rating agencies' judgment and the difference could be relevant. The article presents an empirical analysis on a sample...

We analyse whether soliciting multiple ratings leads to lower syndicated loan spreads. Our results document that banks apply, on average, lower spreads to multi-rated firms. This effect depends on the reduction of information asymmetry about borrowers' creditworthiness (information production...

We analyze the difference between credit default swap (CDS) and syndicated loan spreads, defined as the “CDS-loan basis”. Our results indicate that the CDS-loan basis is greater when the cost of information asymmetry is higher, such as for riskier borrowers and in economic downturns. Our...