Agency Costs of Debt in Conglomerate Firms

Abstract

AbstractI use an accounting reform to assess the agency cost of debt in diversified firms. Those firms that switch from single to multiple segments following the reform suffer a 12% increase in their bond spread when compared with their stand-alone peers. Consistent with lenders anticipating underinvestment and asset-substitution incentives, diversified firms with high cash-flow volatility across divisions suffer the highest increase in borrowing costs. I employ a novel approach that allows abstracting from unobservable characteristics that would otherwise influence the pricing of diversified firms’ debt.