Managerial Ownership of Debt and Bank Loan Contracting

42 Pages Posted: 6 Nov 2010 Last revised: 7 Jun 2011

See all articles by Cong Wang

Cong Wang

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Fei Xie

University of Delaware - Lerner College of Business and Economics; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Xiangang Xin

City University of Hong Kong

Date Written: September 21, 2010

Abstract

Debt ownership by equity-holding managers aligns their incentives more closely with those of creditors, thereby reducing agency costs of debt. We test this hypothesis by examining how terms of bank loans are related to executive pension and deferred compensation, i.e., inside debt held by managers against their own firms. Within-firm differences around initial disclosures of executive pension and deferred compensation mandated by the SEC indicate that banks charge lower yield spreads on loans to firms whose CEOs hold more inside debt. Cross-sectional regressions confirm the negative relation between CEO inside debt holdings and loan spreads and further show that the negative relation is more pronounced when creditors face higher expropriation risk and when the CEO’s expected retirement horizon is beyond loan maturity. We also find that loans to firms with larger managerial debt holdings are associated with fewer covenant restrictions, less collateral requirement and smaller lending syndicates, consistent with lenders anticipating lower expropriation risk at these firms.

Keywords: Managerial ownership of debt, inside debt, executive pension, deferred compensation, bank loan contracting, loan spread, agency costs of debt, expropriation risk, syndicate size, covenant restriction, collateral requirement

JEL Classification: G32, G34, G20, G31

Suggested Citation

Wang, Cong and Xie, Fei and Xin, Xiangang, Managerial Ownership of Debt and Bank Loan Contracting (September 21, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1703473 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1703473

Cong Wang

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen ( email )

Fei Xie (Contact Author)

University of Delaware - Lerner College of Business and Economics ( email )

42 Amstel Ave
Newark, DE 19716
United States
(302) 8313811 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://sites.google.com/site/feisresearch/

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

Xiangang Xin

City University of Hong Kong ( email )

83 Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon
Hong Kong
Hong Kong

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