leverage ratios after their lending banks are involved in M&As, by increasing bond finance to more than compensate a reduction … in bank loans. Consistent with the hedging motive for cash holdings à la Acharya et al. (2007), the increase in leverage …

leverage faced tighter constraints in accessing bank credit after the COVID-19 outbreak in spring 2020. Specifically, SMEs with … higher pre-COVID leverage obtained a smaller volume of new loans and had to pay a higher spread on them during the pandemic …