International Corporate Bonds Research Articles

Economic uncertainty and credit risk: Evidence from international corporate bonds

Credit spreads are positively associated with economic policy uncertainty. This association is stronger in developing countries and countries with French-origin legal systems and worse sovereign credit ratings. This relation is also stronger for firms that usually face worse credit conditions.

Capital Account Liberalization and International Corporate Bond Issuance: Transaction‐level Evidence from China

AbstractThis paper provides transaction‐level evidence about the impact of capital account liberalization on firms' bond issuance in the international financial market. Using bond issuance data for firms headquartered in China between 2014 and 2018, we showed that domestic private firms issued more bonds abroad than foreign‐invested enterprises after restrictions were largely relaxed, controlling for possible confounding shocks such as monetary policy, local credit market shocks, US interest rate, carry trade, and global uncertainty shocks measured by the Chicago Board Option Exchange's Volatility Index. We found that domestic firms did not increase the overall volume of bond issuance but just had a higher portion of international bond issuance. We also found that domestic firms with higher tangible asset ratios tended to issue more bonds abroad. Our results suggest that targeted liberalization policy could effectively stimulate firms to issue bonds abroad. Policymakers need to monitor closely firms that issue more bonds abroad and thus have greater exposure to global shocks, incorporate these financial risks into policy design, and safeguard financial stability more effectively.

Going Global or Staying Local: Determinants of Domestic and International Corporate Bond Issues in the Baltics

In the period 2017-2022, there has been a notable growth in international bond placements by Baltic companies, which is distinct from corporate bond issuance in the European Economic Area. While the Baltic governments have demonstrated an increased focus on the corporate bond market development – the pan-Baltic Capital Markets Union launched in 2017 and covered bond law as adopted in Latvia in 2021, those activities are not directly linked to the ongoing shift to international corporate borrowing. In the academic literature, the determinants affecting corporate bond issuance are getting certain attention while studying separately the country-level determinants and the firm-level determinants, which are further split into domestic and international corporate bond issuance. For the Baltic countries, rare academic research has focused on the corporate bond market development of an individual Baltic country. 
 This paper aims to discover the determinants for domestic and international corporate bond issuance of Baltic companies. While providing theoretical insight into corporate bond issuance rationale for both domestic and international placements, the paper focuses on factors that have contributed to firms choosing to issue bonds internationally. The methods applied in this study are scientific publication analysis, document analysis, expert survey, in-depth interviews, and statistical data analysis. For the statistical analysis, macroeconomic data was acquired from Cbonds, The World Bank, and International Monetary Fund databases in combination with company-specific data gathered from Nasdaq CSD, Orbis, Lursoft, Storybook, and Rekvizitai. The authors have employed a panel regression model for domestic and international bond issuance, and probit regression for all issued bonds in the Baltics from 2003-2022 to estimate the probability of pursuing bond financing internationally.
 The findings of this paper indicate that in the Baltics the main firm-level determinants for domestic corporate bond issuance are the company’s financial performance, its geographic exposure, documentation and listing costs, and access to alternative funding sources; on the country-level, the determinants are the share of sovereign international bonds of GDP, corruption perception, and exports as a share of GDP. For issuing international corporate bonds, the main determinants on the firm-level are bond placement size, company size, equity ratio, a satisfactory credit rating, and appropriate yields in the context of higher competition for international investor attention; on the country-level, GDP per capita, country’s export share, interest rate spread, regulatory quality, and political stability play an important role.

Large international corporate bonds: Investor behavior and firm responses

Emerging market corporations have significantly increased their borrowing in international debt markets since 2008. We provide a detailed dive into this borrowing by showing that it happened in one particular market segment. Firms significantly increased their large bond issuances, mostly above US$500 million, which became cheaper to issue. We find a strong clustering of issuances with a face value of exactly $500 million after 2008 compared to developed markets. This suggests increased willingness from investors, especially cross-over investors, to purchase emerging market bonds included in newly created bond indexes, which require a minimum face value of $500 million. However, not all firms could issue such large bonds. Firms large enough to do so faced a trade-off. Issuing index-eligible bonds allowed them to borrow at a lower cost at the expense of accumulating cash. Because of this “size yield discount,” many companies increased their issuances of index-eligible bonds, accumulating cash holdings.

Illiquidity premiums in international corporate bond markets

Illiquidity premiums in international corporate bond markets

International Corporate Bond Market: Uncovering Risks Using Machine Learning

International Corporate Bond Market: Uncovering Risks Using Machine Learning

Risk and return in international corporate bond markets

Corporate bond returns in major developed economies increase with lower ratings and higher residual maturity. The performance of various factor models featuring corporate, sovereign and equity markets as factors suggests that the corporate bond factor plays a dominant role in explaining the variation of corporate bond returns. From a factor model perspective, local factors contribute substantially more than global factors. The factor exposures show intuitive patterns: as ratings worsen, corporate bond β’s increase steeply, sovereign β’s decline monotonically and equity β’s show a hockey stick pattern. However, from a pricing perspective, we find little evidence against the global CAPM model.

Foreign Discount in International Corporate Bonds

Foreign Discount in International Corporate Bonds

Risk and Return in International Corporate Bond Markets

Risk and Return in International Corporate Bond Markets

The Global Credit Spread Puzzle

Using security-level credit spread data in eight developed economies, we document a large cross-country difference in credit spreads conditional on credit ratings and other default risk measures. The standard structural models not only fail to explain this cross-country variation in spreads but also have difficulty predicting credit spreads accurately. We implement an extended structural model that incorporates endogenous liquidity in the secondary market and find that this model largely explains credit spreads in the cross section and over time, as well as significantly reduces pricing errors. Therefore, default risk itself is an unlikely explanation for international corporate bond spreads.

Corporate governance and international bond issues by Latin American corporations

This paper analyses the relationship between corporate bond issues and the existence of corporate governance frameworks that influence the development of financial markets by reducing information asymmetries and conflicts of interest. To this end, the international corporate bond market is reviewed and corporate governance standards in Brazil and in the four countries belonging to the Latin American Integrated Market (MILA) —Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru— are evaluated using a bond issues indicator developed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Andean Development Corporation (CAF) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The evidence gathered using a probit panel model and a pooled probit model indicates that adherence to corporate governance standards can increase the likelihood that a firm will be able to carry out a successful international bond issue.

Risk and Return in International Corporate Bond Markets

We investigate risk and return in the major corporate bond markets of the developed world. We find that average returns increase with maturity and ratings class (where ratings go from high to low). From a pricing perspective, we find little to no evidence against the World CAPM model, where the market consists out of equity, sovereign and corporate bonds. However, from a factor model perspective a model, which separates the market portfolio into its three components, fits much more of the corporate bond return variation. In addition, local factors contribute substantially more to the variation of corporate bond returns than do global factors, and a \textquotedblleft local\textquotedblright three-factor model explains more than 80\% of the return variation for 59 of 63 portfolios examined. The factor exposures show intuitive patterns; for example as ratings worsen, equity $\beta$'s show a hockey stick pattern, sovereign $\beta$'s decline monotonically and the corporate bond $\beta$'s increase steeply. Our results are robust to the use of hedged versus unhedged returns and are also corroborated by a panel regression at the CUSIP level.

Capital Controls and the Cost of Debt

Using a panel data set for international corporate bonds and capital account restrictions in advanced and emerging economies, we show that restrictions on capital inflows produce a substantial and economically meaningful increase in corporate bond spreads, with a one-standard-deviation increase in our capital controls index increasing spreads by up to 35 basis points. The effect of capital controls on inflows differs across firms and across countries; the effect is particularly strong for firms that face more restricted access to alternative sources of external financing. Our findings establish a novel channel through which capital controls affect economic outcomes.

Capital Controls and the Cost of Debt

Using a panel data set for international corporate bonds and capital account restrictions in advanced and emerging economies, we show that restrictions on capital inflows produce a substantial and economically meaningful increase in corporate bond spreads. A number of heterogeneities suggest that the effect of capital controls on inflows is particularly strong for more financially constrained firms, establishing a novel channel through which capital controls affect economic outcomes. By contrast, we do not find a robust significant effect of restrictions on outflows.

The Impact of Hedge Funds on Asset Markets

While there has been enormous interest in hedge funds from academics, prospective and current investors, and policymakers, rigorous empirical evidence of their impact on asset markets has been di¢ cult to …nd. We construct a simple measure of the aggregate illiquidity of hedge fund portfolios, and show that it has strong in- and out-of-sample forecasting power for 72 portfolios of international equities, corporate bonds, and currencies over the 1994 to 2011 period. The forecasting ability of hedge fund illiquidity for asset returns is in most cases greater than, and provides independent information relative to, well-known predictive variables for each of these asset classes. We construct a simple equilibrium model to rationalize our …ndings, and empirically verify auxiliary predictions of the model.

Rollover Risk and Credit Spreads: Evidence from International Corporate Bonds *

Using a new dataset on corporate bonds placed in international markets by emerging and developed borrowers, this article demonstrates that a high proportion of short-term debt exacerbates the effect of debt market illiquidity on corporate bond spreads. This effect is present during both periods of financial stability and of financial distress, and it is smaller in the banking sector than in other sectors. The article’s major finding is robust when controlling for potential endogeneity. Moreover, the results are consistent with the predictions of structural credit risk models that argue that a higher proportion of short-term debt increases a firm’s exposure to debt market illiquidity through a “rollover risk” channel.

How firms use corporate bond markets under financial globalization

This paper studies how firms from developed and developing countries have used domestic and international corporate bond markets since the 1990s. We find that debt issues in domestic and international markets have different characteristics. International issues tend to be larger, of shorter maturity, denominated in foreign currency, include more fixed rate contracts, and entail lower yields. These patterns persist even when analyzing issues by firms from countries with more developed domestic markets and higher financial integration and when comparing issues conducted by the same firm in different markets. These findings are consistent with the existence of frictions that segment domestic and international corporate bond markets and with these markets providing distinct financial services.

The Impact of Hedge Funds on Asset Markets

This paper provides evidence of the impact of hedge funds on asset markets. We construct a simple measure of the aggregate illiquidity of hedge fund portfolios, based on the cross-sectional average first order autocorrelation coefficient of hedge fund returns, and show that it has strong and robust in- and out-of-sample forecasting power for 72 portfolios of international equities, corporate bonds, and currencies over the 1994 to 2013 period. The forecasting ability of hedge fund illiquidity for asset returns is in most cases greater than, and provides independent information relative to, well-known predictive variables for each of these asset classes. We rationalize these findings using a simple equilibrium model in which hedge funds provide liquidity in asset markets.

Do Firms Believe in Interest Rate Parity?*

Using a broad sample of international corporate bond offerings, we provide evidence that corporate borrowers make opportunistic currency choices, in that they denominate the currency of their bonds in a manner that is inconsistent with a belief in either covered or uncovered interest rate parity. Using firm-level tests, we identify a number of characteristics of firms that engage in opportunistic behavior. We observe that large issuers located in developed markets with investment-grade ratings and low cash flow characterize those firms that are responsive to covered borrowing rate differences across currencies. Corporate responsiveness to uncovered borrowing rate differences appears more general. We observe that although the gains firms achieve through opportunistic currency denomination are economically significant, the yield differential tends to systematically decline after issuance. This finding suggests that opportunistic issuance by corporations may be a primary mechanism for driving covered interest yields toward parity. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Multimarket Trading and the Cost of Debt: Evidence from Global Bonds

Global bonds are international securities designed to be traded and settled efficiently in multiple markets. This paper studies global bonds to examine the effects of multi-market trading on corporate bond liquidity, prices, and the cost of debt. Using a sample of primary and secondary market transactions matched by issuer, I find that global bonds command a significant liquidity and price advantage over comparable domestic bonds. On average, global bonds trade at yields 15 to 25 basis points below domestic bonds of the same issuers, with the difference being greater for speculative grade bonds and in times of crisis. Global issues are more liquid, as evidenced by several trade-based liquidity measures, but the liquidity advantage of global bonds does not fully explain the yield differential. The findings imply that international corporate bond markets are not fully integrated, and global bond offerings can reduce the cost of debt. JEL Classification: G15, G12, G32, F36