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High‐yield bonds have made giant takeovers possible. The largest takeover recorded so far, Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co.'s (KKR) $24 billion acquisition of RJR‐Nabisco, was financed in large part by high‐yield bonds. Even though it was almost twice the size of the largest transaction up to that point, KKR had no trouble raising the money. Like many takeover financings, the offer was oversubscribed.

Over recent years an increasing amount of funds has been committed to mergers and acquisitions in the UK. Expenditure rose nearly tenfold from £2.3bn in 1983 to £22.1bn in 1988. This surge in spending has continued despite fears over economic trends, both domestic and international, and shocks in financial markets, notably the global col lapse in share values of October 1987. This monograph is essentially concerned with the events up to, and including, the first three quarters of 1989, ie, a period of two years after the crash of October 1987. Whilst the financing of mer gers and acquisitons activity is a fast moving arena, it does seem to be an opportune time to review developments to date and, tentatively, to suggest future trends in this sphere.

The fall of Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham and Lambert, and the junk bond market has a familiar ring. In his book Money, John Kenneth Galbraith introduces us to banking with the following sobering thoughts: “As banking developed from the seventeenth century on, so, with the support of circumstance, did the cycles of euphoria and panic. Their length came to accord roughly with the time it took people to forget the last disaster—for the financial geniuses of one generation to die in disrepute and be replaced by new craftsmen who the gullible and the gulled could believe had, this time but truly, the Midas touch.”

To determine the effect that covenants have on the credit ratings assigned by the two major agencies.

The authors examine 1,822 bond issues from 1991 to 2018, with a two-stage methodology to account for the endogeneity of the firms' choices and the ordinal nature of the ratings. The authors use Hendry's model selection method to find the best-fitting models from 37 control variables; the final models feature 20–24 orthogonalized variables, all significant at 5% and most at 1%.

The study’s results suggest that restrictive covenants positively affect ratings, particularly for bonds on the border of junk and investment grade. However, this effect appears to be decreasing with time, suggesting the financial crisis of 2008 has impacted ratings. Additionally, divergent covenant treatment leads to split ratings where the two agencies assign different levels of ratings on the same bonds. The study’s findings provide key insights into the factors that differentiate ratings given by each agency.

Managers must balance the perceived benefits of covenants against the costs, included lower credit ratings.

No other study has examined this issue controlling for both the ordinal nature of the ratings and the endogeneity in the decision to include specific covenants.

Financial Management.

Masters, Bachelors.

In 2011, Real Sound Lab (RSL), an innovative audio technology company headquartered in Latvia, issued a bond to finance its needs. The face value of the issue was much smaller than what was typically encountered in the local market. The case describes how Viesturs Sosars, Chief Executive Officer of RSL, made this financing decision and how the difficulties at maturity were overcome.

Learn about financing options available for an small- or medium-sized enterprise in the case of inability to issue additional equity combined with an already high debt ratio. Learn about important considerations that should be made when deciding on the details of the bond issue and how these might impact the possible actions of the issuing company in case of being unable to repay the principal at maturity.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

It is well known that it is difficult to dislodge incumbents if new entrants provide identical services via identical channels. Hence, it was expected that, especially in a broadband world, the main competition for fixed‐wire networks would come from cable operators. The UK was one of the first countries in Europe to develop cable as a practical alternative to fixed‐wire telephony, but in the event not only was the initial structure of the industry seriously flawed but the cost of creating cable networks proved to be a recipe for bankruptcy. However, once restructured post‐bankruptcy, the remaining two cable operators may finally fulfil their destiny.

This study aims to investigate the spillover between the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) stock index and several security indices, including Sukuk and conventional bond, and ultimately compare the hedge effectiveness of Sukuk and conventional bond.

The study uses VAR (1)-asymmetric Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner-multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (1,1) model to analyze the volatility and shock and asymmetric shock spillover between Sukuk index and several bond indices in the MENA region including, Bond, All Bond, High Yield Bond and Bond and Sukuk and MENA stock market index and ultimately compare the hedging capabilities of Sukuk and conventional bonds by calculating the optimal portfolio weights for securities indices and stock portfolios and hedge effectiveness of security indices.

Results indicate that there is no shock, volatility and asymmetric shock spillover between the Sukuk index and MENA stock index, implying that Sukuk indices behave independently from MENA stock indices; however, there is shock and asymmetric shock spillover between MENA stock indices and security indices that include conventional bonds. The result of optimal portfolio weights and corresponding hedge effectiveness indicate that Sukuk is the most significant asset among other security indices in diversifying and hedging stock MENA portfolios. Moreover, the hedge effectiveness of Sukuk shows persistent trends during both the normal and crisis periods.

The study suggests that MENA stock market investors and investment managers should add Sukuk instead of the conventional bond to their portfolio to hedge their portfolio against investment risks during both normal and crisis periods.

Although many studies compare many aspects of Sukuk and conventional bonds, this is the first study that compares the hedge effectiveness of Sukuk and conventional bond based on the time-varying optimal portfolio weights strategy.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of bank interventions on bond performance in relation to loan covenant violations.

This paper tests the following questions: do bondholders receive benefits from bank interventions? Is bond performance related to the probability of bank interventions? Is the turnover of a chief executive officer (CEO) associated with bank interventions and bond performance? Abnormal bond returns, the difference between bond returns and matched bond index returns are used to measure bond performance. An estimated outstanding loan balance is used to measure the probability of bank interventions. CEO turnover is identified from proxy statements and categorized into forced and voluntary CEO turnovers. Event studies and regression analysis were used to answer the above research questions.

This paper finds that both short-term and long-term bond returns increase after covenant violations, bond performance is positively related to the probability of bank interventions, forced CEO turnovers are positively associated with the probability of bank interventions and firms with forced CEO turnovers tend to have superior bond performance.

This paper is the first to explore the relation between bank interventions and bond performance.