Search Results
Journal Article
Trends in financial market concentration and their implications for market stability
The link between financial market concentration and stability is a topic of great interest to policymakers and other market participants. Are concentrated markets - those where a relatively small number of firms hold large market shares - inherently more prone to disruption? This article considers that question by drawing on academic studies as well as introducing new analysis. Like other researchers, the authors find an ambiguous relationship between concentration and instability when a large firm in a concentrated market fails. In a complementary review of concentration trends across a ...
Discussion Paper
Investigating the Trading Activity of CLO Portfolio Managers
Unlike mortgage-backed and home equity-backed securities, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), whose collateral is predominantly corporate loans, are slowly but steadily recovering. This revival, illustrated in the chart below, spotlights again a sector of nonagency structured finance that has been scrutinized for its investment practices. This post investigates the trading activities of CLO collateral managers. Understanding their investment strategies is crucial to assessing their effectiveness as financial intermediaries, including their role in financing leveraged buyouts, corporate ...
Report
Why do banks target ROE?
Historically, nonfinancial corporations relied on performance targets linked to their EPS. Up until the 1970s, banks also appeared to follow a similar practice, but since then they have favored ROE. Equity investors seem to be aware of these differences because EPS growth is better at explaining nonfinancials? stock market value while ROE is better at explaining banks? market values. In this paper we present a model of a bank with fixed-rate deposit insurance that faces increasing competition that erodes its charter value. When under these conditions the bank chooses its capital to maximize ...
Conference Paper
Do corporate loans sold to CLOs underperform unsecurities loans
Discussion Paper
The Side Effects of Shadow Banking on Liquidity Provision
Over the past two decades, the growth of shadow banking has transformed the way the U.S. banking system funds corporations. In this post, we describe how this growth has affected both the term loan and credit line businesses, and how the changes have resulted in a reduction in the liquidity insurance provided to firms.
Working Paper
Tying loan interest rates to borrowers' CDS spreads
We investigate how the introduction of market-based pricing, the practice of tying loan interest rates to credit default swaps, has affected borrowing costs. We find that CDS-based loans are associated with lower interest rates, both at origination and during the life of the loan. Our results also indicate that banks simplify the covenant structure of market-based pricing loans, suggesting that the decline in the cost of bank debt is explained, at least in part, by a reduction in monitoring costs. Market-based pricing, therefore, besides reducing the cost of bank debt, may also have adverse ...
Discussion Paper
Did Securitization Lead to Riskier Corporate Lending?
There?s ample evidence that securitization led mortgage lenders to take more risk, thereby contributing to a large increase in mortgage delinquencies during the financial crisis. In this post, I discuss evidence from a recent research study I undertook with Vitaly Bord suggesting that securitization also led to riskier corporate lending. We show that during the boom years of securitization, corporate loans that banks securitized at loan origination underperformed similar, unsecuritized loans originated by the same banks. Additionally, we report evidence suggesting that the performance gap ...
Journal Article
Evidence from the bond market on banks’ “Too-Big-to-Fail” subsidy
Using information on bonds issued over the 1985-2009 period, this study finds that the largest banks have a funding advantage over their smaller peers. This advantage may not be entirely attributable to investors? belief that the largest banks are ?too big to fail,? because the study also finds that the largest nonbanks, as well as the largest nonfinancial corporations, have a cost advantage relative to their smaller peers. However, a comparison across the three groups reveals that the funding advantage enjoyed by the largest banks is significantly larger than that available to the largest ...
Discussion Paper
The Costs of Corporate Debt Overhang Following the COVID-19 Outbreak
Leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, there were growing concerns about corporate sector indebtedness. High levels of borrowing may give rise to a “debt overhang” problem, particularly during downturns, whereby firms forego good investment opportunities because of an inability to raise additional funding. In this post, we show that firms with high levels of borrowing at the onset of the Great Recession underperformed in the following years, compared to similar—but less indebted—firms. These findings, together with early data on the revenue contractions following the COVID-19 outbreak, ...
Discussion Paper
Outflows from Bank-Loan Funds during COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has put significant pressure on debt markets, especially those populated by riskier borrowers. The leveraged loan market, in particular, came under remarkable stress during the month of March. Bank-loan mutual funds, among the main holders of leveraged loans, suffered massive outflows that were reminiscent of the outflows they experienced during the 2008 crisis. In this post, we show that the flow sensitivity of the loan-fund industry to the COVID-19 crisis (and to negative shocks more generally) seems to be even greater than that of high-yield bond funds, which also ...