We study firms' decisions to enter public bond markets for the first time (bond IPOs). We show that a firm's ability to access the public bond market is greatly improved by the presence of “habitual dual holders” (HDHs) – financial conglomerates which have the tendency to simultaneously...

We document that in M&As a significant proportion of targets' equity is owned by financial institutions that simultaneously own targets' bonds (“dual holders”). Targets with larger equity ownership by dual holders have lower M&A equity premia and larger abnormal bond returns, particularly...