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The purpose of this paper is to fill this void in the existing literature and investigate how firms’ disclosure policies influence bank loan contracting in emerging markets after controlling for the influence of borrowers’ private information obtained by banks. Furthermore, the paper examines how firms’ disclosure and non-disclosure governance interact to affect financial contracts.

The key variables Disclosure and Firm Governance are based on a survey by Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia (CLSA) in 2000. The paper hand-merges CLSA disclosure and governance data with the Dealscan database and Worldscope database by firm names. The paper conducts a multivariate analysis to investigate how firms’ disclosure policies influence bank loan contracting and how firms’ disclosure and non-disclosure governance interact to affect financial contracts.

The authors found that firms with superior disclosure policies obtain bank loans with more favorable loan contracting terms, such as larger amounts, longer maturity, and lower spread. In addition, the effects of disclosure on bank loan contracting are more pronounced for borrowers with superior firm-level non-disclosure governance or firms located in a country with better country-level governance.

The paper provides a more comprehensive view of the effects of corporate disclosure has on financial contracts in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a firm’s investment behavior relates to its subsequent bank loan contracting.

Using a sample of US firms during the period 1992-2011, the authors examine the association between overinvestment (underinvestment) and three characteristics of bank loan contracts: loan spread, collateral requirement, and loan maturity.

The authors find that overinvesting firms obtain loans with higher loan spreads. Additional tests show that the effect of overinvestment on loan spreads is generally more pronounced in firms with lower reputation, weaker shareholder rights, and lower institutional ownership. The effect of overinvestment on collateral requirement is mixed, and investment efficiency has no significant relation to loan maturity.

The results are subject to the following caveats. First, while the study provides empirical evidence that investment efficiency affects bank loan contracting terms, especially the cost of bank loans, the underlying theory is not well-developed. The authors leave it up to future research to provide a theoretical framework to clearly distinguish the cash flow and credit risk effects of past investment behavior from those of existing agency conflicts. Second, due to data limitation, the sample size is small, especially when the authors control for corporate governance measured by G-index and institutional ownership.

The finding that overinvestment is costly to corporations suggests that managers should consider the potential trade-offs from such investment decisions carefully. The evidence also alerts shareholders and board members to the importance of monitoring management investment decisions. In addition, the authors find that corporate governance moderates the relationship between investment decisions and cost of bank loans, suggesting that it would be beneficial to design effective governance mechanisms to prevent management from empire building and motivate managers to pursue efficient investment strategies.

First, the findings enhance understanding of the potential economic consequences of overinvestment decisions in the context of a firm’s private debt contracting. The evidence suggests that lenders perceive higher credit risk from overinvestment than from underinvestment, likely because firms squander cash in the current period by investing in (negative net present value) projects that are likely to result in future cash flow problems. Second, the study contributes to the literature on the determinants of bank loans by identifying an observable empirical proxy for uncertainty in future cash flows that increases credit risk.

An important question is whether lenders perceive politically connected firms as having less or higher default risk, and thus provide them with more or less preferential loan terms compared with non-connected firms. This paper aims to examine the relationship between political connections of corporate board members and cost of debt and loan contracting in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

The initial sample comprises 288 GCC firm-year observations from 227 publicly listed firms in Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates for the period from 2011 to 2015. It includes all the GCC publicly listed firms, excluding those in the financial, insurance and banking sectors because these entities are subject to different regulations. The ordinary least squares, logit regression and other sensitivity tests have been used to analyse the data and enhance reliability of the results.

This study finds that politically connected firms, particularly those connected through ruling royal family members, are associated with lower cost of debt, greater amounts of loans and longer-term government loans. Therefore, these findings support the prediction that political connections benefit GCC firms in the form of access to favourable terms from both government and commercial banks.

This study contributes to the extant literature by providing insightful analysis using unique political features of the GCC, integrated with agency and resource dependency theories. In particular, this study fills the gap in understanding the nature of loan contracting offered by government and commercial banks in the presence of politically connected boards within GCC setting.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of a firm’s customer base concentration on its loan contract terms and how this effect varies with the strength of its customer relationship.

This study is an archival research based on a sample of US public firms that have loan contract data between 1990 and 2008. Major customer sales data are used to construct customer concentration and customer relationship measures. A debt contract model is employed to relate loan spread and other contract terms to customer concentration and relationship.

This study finds that firms with more concentrated customer bases have higher loan spread and shorter loan maturity and are more likely to issue secured loans. These negative effects disappear when the supplier firm maintains strong relationship with its customers.

Additional forward-looking measure of customer relationship could benefit future research.

A firm’s customer base characteristics can have significant impacts on the terms of its loan contracts. Findings from this study support the notion that customer relationship is an important intangible asset that is informative to stakeholders of the firm.

This study proposes a new measure of customer relationship based on the past repeated relationships between a firm and its major customers. It shows that customer characteristics may affect firms’ contracts with creditors: customer base concentration increases credit risk whereas strong customer relationship improves credit quality.

This paper aims to investigate whether the Section 404 of Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX 404) changed the way banks use accounting information to price corporate loans.

The study uses a sample of 1,173 US-listed firms that issued syndicated loans both before and after their compliance with SOX 404 to analyze the changes in loan spread’s sensitivity to some key accounting metrics such as ROA, interest coverage, leverage and net worth.

The study finds that the interest spread’s sensitivity to key accounting metrics, most noticeably for ROA, declined following the borrower’s compliance with the requirements of SOX 404. The decline was not explainable by borrowers that disclosed internal control weaknesses but concentrated among borrowers suspected of real earnings management (REM).

By examining the effects of SOX 404 on banks’ pricing process, this study augments the literature on SOX’s economic consequences. The findings suggest that lenders perceive little new information from SOX 404 disclosures of internal control deficiencies and are cautious about the accounting information provided by REM borrowers. It also extends the research on the use of accounting information in debt contracting. By examining loan interest’s sensitivity to accounting metrics, it broadens the concept of debt contracting value of accounting information to include accounting’s usefulness for assessing credit risk at loan inception.

This paper aims to examine whether firms retaining industry-specialist auditors receive better price and non-price terms for bank loans.

Based on a sample of companies retaining big N auditors during the 2000-2010 period, this paper constructed six proxies for auditor industry expertise and tested three major loan terms: loan spreads, number of general and financial covenants and requirements for collateral.

It was found that companies retaining industry-specialist auditors receive lower interest rates and fewer covenants. Banks are also less likely to demand secured collateral. These findings are supported by several sensitivity tests.

The findings suggest that auditor industry expertise provides incremental value to creditors and that bank loan cost is one economic benefit for companies hiring specialist auditors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the impact of auditor industry expertise on the cost of private debts.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of non-commercial banking institutions’ simultaneous holdings of equity and debt in the same firm (hereafter, dual holdings) on financial covenants in debt contracts.

By using the DealScan database, this study tests how dual holdings affect the number of financial debt covenants.

This study finds that the presence of dual holders is positively associated with the number of financial covenants in general, suggesting that the use of financial covenants is reduced when the interests between shareholders and creditors are aligned. This study also finds that dual holder participation does not reduce the number of financial covenants in leveraged loans as much as it does in investment-grade loans. Additionally, when a dual holder has a large portion of equity stakes and loan claims in a borrowing firm, the effect of dual holdings on financial covenants is more pronounced.

This study contributes to debt market research by showing that dual holder participation reduces the number of financial covenants in debt contracts.

Pledging collateral to secure loans is a prominent feature in financing contracts around the world. Existing theories disagree on why borrowers pledge collateral. It is even more challenging to understand why in some countries collateral coverage exceeds, for example, 300% of the value of a loan. This study looks at the association between collateral coverage and country-level governance and various institutional proxies. It investigates the economic implications of steep collateral coverage and sketches policy options to lower ex-ante asymmetric information and ex-post agency problems. Within this framework, should a lender collect the debt forcibly on default and liquidated assets fetch prices below outstanding loan values, the lender’s loss is covered through credit insurance, which would significantly reduce the need for steep collateral coverage. This proposal may increase level of private credit, investment and growth; particularly, in a number of developing countries where collateral spread is the main inhibitor of finance.

Islamic banks are obliged to carry out transactions that only comply with Islamic commercial laws. Malaysia has been championing the Sharīʿah-based banking system, and so, continuous improvement on the compliance level of the institutions offering Islamic financial services is key to its global recognition in this industry. One of the issues that can affect deposit products is existence of a sale contract and loan facility in one transaction. Famous prophetic tradition prohibits this. Hence, this paper aims to examine the linkage between bayʿwa salaf (combination between a sale contract and loan in one transaction) and deposits accounts in Malaysia.

The subject matter of this paper is one that is researchable within library-based research. It is on this premise the research used the non-empirical qualitative research methodology. It used inductive method of analysis of both Islamic and policy documents on Islamic banking in Malaysia. Literature from Islamic jurisprudence, websites of some of the Islamic banks in Malaysia and relevant resolutions from the Shariah Advisory Council of Central Bank of Malaysia were consulted.

Based on the methodology mentioned above, the researchers arrived at the following findings: that, although there is no juristic disagreement about the prohibition of bayʿwa salaf, disagreement, however, occurs in results of some contracts. The most notable area of agreement on the existence of bayʿwa salaf is when there is express stipulation of sale or rendering of service and express or implied stipulation of loan alongside of the sale or service rendering. In an organized reversed tawarruq, the use of these deposits by the banks is regarded as loan from the depositors to the banks, who will soon put the money into sale that will generate profit to be divided between the banks and their depositors. However, this study finds that this is not bayʿwa salaf prohibited by the prophetic tradition.

The originality of this topic is proven by the new banking regulation regime of Malaysia, which compels Islamic banks to guarantee all deposits under them. As Islamic banks carry out their banking activities through trading, there is need to conduct a research such as this. This is to examine whether Islamic banks’ unilateral use of depositors’ funds in non-investment accounts which is translated, constructively, as loan from the depositors to Islamic banks amounts to bayʿwa salaf before the future tawarruq. Here there is loan and sale, which is the tawarruq. Hence, the need to do this research.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether companies that contracted loans from the Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) between 2002 and 2014 were able to invest more than companies that did not. The literature on financial constraints, particularly that based on the investment-cash flow sensitivity model, is among the most studied and controversial in the area of finance, and the discussion on the role of development banks is equally controversial.

The main econometric model of this study was based on the investment-cash flow sensitivity model, with the incorporation of a binary variable that captures the role of the BNDES. This model is applied to a sample of companies listed on the B3 from 2002 to 2014.

This study shows that loans from the BNDES amplify the effects of cash flow on investments, generating a kind of credit multiplier. An important role of development banks is to reduce the financial constraints typical of developing countries.

The use of the cash flow sensitivity model in companies that contracted loans from the BNDES is a relevant instrument to test the effect of the BNDES on companies with financial constraints.

The contracting of BNDES loans by companies can affect both capital structure and cash generation, particularly in companies or years in which there was financial constraint.

Due to the nature of the BNDES as a development bank, there are ramifications in terms of the generation of employment and income inherent to the mission of this type of institution. Knowing the multiplier effect on the cash flow potential of companies has a direct impact on their preservation, enabling them to maintain and expand the supply of jobs.

This study is the first to integrate two important areas of study. From the theoretical perspective, this study provides evidence on the relationship between the BNDES and company financial constraints that open new avenues of research. From the managerial point of view, the evidence of the multiplier effect is highly important for the management of the capital structure and cash flow of companies.