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Working Paper
High-Yield Debt Covenants and Their Real Effects
High-yield debt, including leveraged loans, is characterized by incurrence financial covenants, or “cov-lite” provisions. Unlike, traditional, maintenance covenants, incurrence covenants preserve equity control rights but trigger pre-specified restrictions on the borrower’s actions once the covenant threshold is crossed. We show that restricted actions impose significant constraints on investments: Similar to the effects of the shift of control rights to creditors in traditional loans, the drop in investment under incurrence covenants is large and sudden. This evidence suggests a new ...