Executive compensation is designed to create incentives for CEOs to act in the best interest of shareholders. Short-term (bonus) and equity-based incentives induce risk taking behaviors of the CEO that could further change a firm's risk exposure. This article examines the linkage between...

We examine the impact on a firm when it is exogenously forced to switch its bank relationship from one branch to another branch of the same bank. We show the effect depends directly on the relative balance between the hard accounting information provided to the bank by the firm, as part of the...

Wealth transfer effects between stockholders and bondholders on the announcement date of changes in a firm's credit rating have primarily been examined a) for one type of security; b) on US capital markets; and c) by applying standard event study methods. In contrast to these investigations, we...

This paper examines the impact of cross-border acquisition announcements on the U.S. bidders’ credit risk. On average, we find a significant increase in bidders’ rating-adjusted credit default swap (CDS) spreads around an acquisition announcement in an emerging market (EM), but no marked...

We document the negative effect of stock liquidity on default risk for a sample of 46 countries. We further find that default risk declines following the introduction of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID)—an exogenous shock that increases liquidity. The effect of...

This paper empirically analyses the effect of foreign block acquisitions on the U.S. target firms' credit risk as captured by their CDS. The involvement of foreign investors leads to a significant increase in the target firms' CDS spreads. This effect is stronger when foreign owners are...

Management risk occurs because uncertainty about future managerial decisions increases a firm's overall risk. This paper documents the importance of management risk in determining firms' cost of borrowing. CDS spreads, loan spreads and bond yield spreads all increase at the time of CEO turnover,...

We evaluate whether management risk, coming from uncertainty about management's value added, affects firms' default risks and debt pricing. We find that, regardless of the reason for the turnover, CDS spreads, loan spreads and bond yield spreads all increase at the time of management turnover,...

Creditors are increasingly transferring debt cash flow rights to other market participants while retaining control rights. We use the market for credit default swaps (CDSs) as a laboratory to show that such debt decoupling causes large adverse effects on firms whose shareholders have high...

We develop a model of managerial compensation structure and asset risk choice. The model provides predictions about how inside debt features affect the relation between credit spreads and compensation components. First, inside debt reduces credit spreads only if it is unsecured. Second, inside...