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Report
The Myth of the Lead Arranger’s Share
We challenge theories that lead arrangers retain shares of syndicated loans to overcome information asymmetries. Lead arrangers frequently sell their entire loan stake—in over 50 percent of term and 70 percent of institutional loans. These selloffs usually occur days after origination, with lead arrangers retaining no other borrower exposure in 37 percent of selloff cases. Counter to theories, sold loans perform better than retained loans. Our results imply that information asymmetries could be lower than commonly assumed or mitigated by alternative mechanisms such as underwriting risk. We ...
Working Paper
EBITDA Add-backs in Debt Contracting: A Step Too Far?
Financial covenants in syndicated loan agreements often rely on definitions of EBITDA that deviate from the GAAP definition. We document the increased usage of non-GAAP addbacks toEBITDA in recent times. Using the 2013 Interagency Guidance on Leveraged Lending, which we argue led to an exogenous increase in non-GAAP EBITDA addbacks, we show that these addbacksincrease the likelihood of loan delinquency and default, and also increase the likelihood of the borrower experiencing a ratings downgrade. Greater use of non-GAAP EBITDA addbacks also makes it more likely that lead arrangers lower their ...
Working Paper
How Do Lead Banks Use Their Private Information about Loan Quality in the Syndicated Loan Market?
We formulate and test two opposing hypotheses about how lead banks in the syndicated loan market use private information about loan quality, the Signaling Hypothesis and Sophisticated Syndicate Hypothesis. We use Shared National Credit (SNC) internal loan ratings made comparable using concordance tables to measure private information. We find favorable private information is associated with higher lead bank loan retention and lower interest rate spreads for pure term loans, ceteris paribus, supporting the Signaling Hypothesis. Neither hypothesis dominates for pure revolvers. The data ...
Working Paper
How Do Lead Banks Use Their Private Information about Loan Quality in the Syndicated Loan Market?
Little is known about how lead banks in the syndicated loan market use their private information about loan quality. We formulate and test two hypotheses, the Signaling Hypothesis and Sophisticated Syndicate Hypothesis. To measure private information, we use Shared National Credit (SNC) internal loan ratings, which we make comparable across banks using concordance tables. We find that favorable private information is associated with higher loan retention by lead banks for term loans, consistent with empirical domination of the Signaling Hypothesis, while neither hypothesis dominates for ...
Working Paper
Loan Sales and Bank Liquidity Risk Management: Evidence from a U.S. Credit Register
We examine the impact of banks' liquidity risk management on secondary loan sales. We track the dynamics of bank loan share ownership in the secondary market using data from the Shared National Credit Program, a credit register of syndicated bank loans administered by U.S. regulators. We analyze the 2007-2009 financial crisis as a market-wide liquidity shock and control for loan demand using a loan-year fixed effects approach. We find that banks with greater reliance on wholesale funding at the onset of the crisis were more likely to exit loan syndicates during the crisis. Our analysis ...