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We investigate the interaction of debt covenants and tax accounting on the adoption of Financial Interpretation No. 48 (FIN 48). We examine how firms respond to the potential tightening of covenant slack upon FIN 48 adoption and whether these actions are penalized by creditors and anticipated by equity markets. We find that upon FIN 48 adoption, the majority of sample corporate borrowers increase their tax reserves and reduce equity. Firms close to debt covenant violation were even more likely to increase tax reserves upon FIN 48 adoption; however, the size of the adjustment was relatively smaller, suggesting that the FIN 48 standards limited, but did not eliminate, firms use of discretion in reporting uncertain tax positions to avoid costly covenant violations. For firms near net worth debt covenant violation, the act of decreasing equity upon FIN 48 adoption imposes real economic costs, as the average cost of debt increased by 43 basis points. Finally, we extend prior research on the market response to FIN 48 by showing how the market response to FIN 48 adoption is a function of debt covenant slack and tax aggressiveness. Specifically, the cumulative abnormal return at the FIN 48 exposure draft release date is negative only for tax aggressive firms that are close to debt covenant violation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by the constraints on firms in the financial ratios in their debt covenants.

This study determines debt risk profiles using three measures: the ex ante probability of covenant violation (Demerjian and Owens, 2016), firms in violation of debt covenants and firms close to covenant violations.

High-risk firms according to all three measures, on average, have a significantly lower level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a substitute for long-term debt. Interestingly, for firms operating in industries in which leases are widely available, firms with a high probability of covenant violation have a significantly higher level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a complement to long-term debt. Further analysis indicates that lease financing is less costly than debt financing for these firms.

Overall, evidence of this study indicates that firms facing financial constraints may attempt to lease more of their assets, but the availability of leasing is constrained by their debt covenant obligations and the strength of the leasing market in its industry.

This study identifies states in which risky firms may treat leases as either complements or substitutes for long-term debt, implying that the leasing decision relates to the availability of an active leasing market for a firm’s assets and the firm’s financial constraints. The findings of this study support recent research showing that debt and leases are complementary in the presence of counterparty risk providing insight into the paradoxical relationship identified in prior research between leases and long-term debt.

This study has two primary objectives. First, it analyzes the information content of confidentiality strictness in corporate loan credit agreements. Second, it examines how confidentiality strictness impacts covenant design, lending syndicate structure and loan pricing.

Using a sample of 6,327 loan credit agreements originated by US public firms in the period of 1996–2017, this study measures the confidentiality strictness in loan contracts using textual analyses that capture the appearance of confidentiality-related words and the length of confidentiality provision. All regressions include relevant loan characteristics, firm-specific accounting variables, industry and year fixed effects. To address the endogeneity concern, the paper uses borrowing firms' rival cash holdings and R&D expenditures to instrument for confidentiality strictness in two-staged least square regressions.

Borrowers which have higher R&D and operate in more competitive product markets have tighter confidentiality policies. Furthermore, this study reveals that confidentiality strictness is negatively associated with the imposition of financial covenants, especially performance covenants. Loan contracts for borrowers with stricter confidentiality on average have more relaxed covenant intensity, measured by the number of covenants. The study also shows that stricter confidentiality attracts finance companies, which have strong expertise in product markets of their parent firms, into the lending syndicate. However, confidentiality-conscious borrowers with higher degree of information asymmetry are subject to higher loan spreads.

This study provides the first examination of confidentiality policies in loan contracts and supports the idea that loan provisions are not simply made of “boilerplate” language. The results suggest that, for confidentiality-sensitive borrowers, the greater exposure to product market competition helps control managerial slack and substitute monitoring from financial markets.

This study aims to examine whether managers use discretion in determining transitional goodwill impairment loss (initial impairment loss or IIL) upon the adoption of SFAS no. 142, Goodwill and Other Intangible Assets, and whether and how the market reacts to the impairment loss and to the absence of goodwill amortization.

Various empirical models are applied to a sample of 870 firms that completed the IIL test.

It is found that more highly leveraged firms (firms that have undergone a recent management change) report lower (greater) goodwill impairment. Stock return is not associated with a boost in earnings caused by elimination of goodwill amortization, but it is negatively associated with an unexpected IIL, with the association being stronger for highly leveraged firms. Subsequently, analysts revise earnings forecasts for upcoming quarters downward in response to the unexpected IIL.

Possibility of measurement errors in proxies is a caveat.

The findings are consistent with the strategic reduction of the goodwill impairment by management to avoid the violation of debt covenants and with the notion that new managers take a big bath so they can report higher earnings in the future. The market tests imply that unexpected IIL provides value‐relevant information about a negative view of the future profit‐making potential of the firm or an adverse impact on its debt contracts. No association with elimination of goodwill amortization can be interpreted as the market's anticipation or the lack of information content in goodwill amortization.

This research helps better understand the importance of managers' incentives in determining IIL as well as the stock market effect of the announcement of the IIL and the exclusion of goodwill amortization.

The study aims to investigates which form of classification shifting is preferred by firms to avoid the violation of debt covenants and whether the higher-audit quality constraints the shifting practices of firms incentivized to avoid covenant violations or not.

A sample of 1,644 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE)-listed firms during the period 2009–2021 has been used in this study and tested through panel data regression models. Two forms of classification shifting, namely expense shifting and revenue shifting have been taken into account. The findings are validated through the propensity-score matching technique.

The findings deduced from the empirical evidence demonstrate that firms prefer revenue shifting over expense shifting to avoid covenant violations, consistent with the notion of the ease-need-advantage-based shifting framework, where firms are found to prefer a shifting tool with greater relative advantage. Further, the author finds that superior audit quality has a constraining effect on expense shifting, but not on revenue shifting, indicating the partial effectiveness of high-quality auditors in curbing the corporate misfeasance of classification shifting. These results are robust to the problem of endogeneity and self-selection bias.

The paper provides new evidence on debt market incentives behind classification shifting, where firms are found to substitute classification shifting forms to avoid covenant violations. Further, the study is among pioneering attempts to investigate the impact of audit quality on revenue shifting and document the non-constraining effect.

To report inflated operating performance indicators, such as operating revenue and operating profit, managers vertically reposition revenue and expense items inside the income statement. This study aims to investigate the relationship between credit market incentives and these practices.

This study examined a sample of 1,592 Bombay Stock Exchange-listed companies from 2009 to 2021 and tested them using panel data regression models. The propensity score matching method and different measurements of classification shifting practices are used to validate the results.

The conclusions drawn from the empirical data show that firms prefer revenue shifting over expense shifting to prevent debt covenant violations. It shows that the firm’s classification-shifting practices are driven by credit market incentives. This finding is consistent with the notion of positive accounting theory that firms engage in classification shifting (earnings management) to avoid violation of debt covenants. Further, the firm’s preference for revenue shifting is in line with the ease-need-advantage-based shifting framework where firms choose the shifting tool based on costs and constraints associated with each tool.

The finding suggests that if managers heavily rely on revenue shifting to avoid debt covenant violations, the firm may end up breaking these covenants based on its actual operating performance. Managers may use aggressive accounting techniques to prevent covenant violations, which can be a warning indicator of financial difficulties or operational problems. It highlights the necessity for creditors and investors to carefully evaluate a company’s financial stability outside of the financial statements that are publicly disclosed. Authorities should create separate forensic accounting standards for auditors to check revenue items and stop the corporate misfeasance of revenue shifting.

The study is among the earlier attempts to provide empirical evidence on credit market incentives behind classification shifting practices. It is the first study that documents the substitution relationship between classification shifting forms for avoiding violation of debt covenants.

This study examines how creditor interventions after debt covenant violations affect corporate tax avoidance. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that creditor interventions increase borrowers' tax avoidance. This effect is concentrated among firms with weaker shareholder governance before creditor interventions and among those with less bargaining power during subsequent debt renegotiations. Our results indicate that creditors play an active role in shaping corporate tax policy outside of bankruptcy.

This paper contributes to the literature as follows. First, it examines if option and stock compensations raise creditor's risk, and which one is more important than the other. Second, it explores if CEO's compensation interacts with CEO overconfidence to raise creditor's risk. Third, it investigates how banks use different loan terms to alleviate their credit risk.

This study used advanced regression analysis and use of generalized methods of moment methodology.

The results show that option compensation is more important than stock compensation in raising credit risk; option compensation interacts with CEO overconfidence, giving rise to a much higher credit risk; and covenant usage is more important than other loan contract terms in mitigating credit risk given that covenant use could not be substituted away by using other loan contract terms such as increasing interest rate, reducing principal or shortening loan duration. This paper has practical implications for credit markets.

The main implication is that hand-collect data are available up to 2010.

It informs creditors the potential sources of loan risk emanating from option rather than stock incentives; it informs creditors that option incentive interacts with CEO overconfidence rendering the credit risk bigger than expected, and it informs creditors the importance of using covenants vis-à-vis other loan contract terms for mitigating compensation and overconfidence risk.

Banks are alerted to the risk due to the interaction between overconfidence and compensations, implying that overconfident managers remunerated with options compensations are more risky than overconfident managers who are not remunerated as such.

This paper is original: (1) The authors show that option compensation is more risky than stock compensation from viewpoint of creditors. This has not been assessed. (2) Interaction between managerial compensation and managerial overconfidence has not been assessed before. (3) Use of different loan contract terms to alleviate risk from overconfident managers (who are prone to over investment but who are innovative according to the literature) has not been evaluated.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between restrictive covenants and accounting conservatism. More specially, the authors try to explain how the use of restrictive covenants of public debt may affect accounting conservatism.

The sample is composed of non-financial firms and for each firm one debt contract is considered. The authors have used the Ball and Shivakumar (2005) models to test the relationships. All variables were retrieved from Mergent Fixed Investment Securities and COMPUSTAT Databases.

The findings of this study show that the more the firm relies on bond covenants, the higher is the degree of conservatism. The authors found also that these firms also exhibited a widely significantly increased level of conservatism in the years following the issuance of debt.

The results should be interpreted with caution because the use of covenants does not take into consideration the tightness of their inclusion in the public debt contract.

This paper makes a timely contribution to the debate of timely loss recognition by confirming the complementarity between the inclusion of restrictive covenants in the debt agreement and the accounting conservatism before and after the emission of public debt.