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 impact of sovereign rating changes on European corporate loan spreads. We demonstrate that sovereign downgrades lead to significant increases in the spread of loans to domestic firms. We find evidence that the negative effects of a sovereign downgrade are widespread across all...