Leverage Adjustment Research Articles

How changes in global liquidity affect dynamics of banks’ leverage: A case in Hong Kong

AbstractThis paper examines how abundant global liquidity could influence the adjustment of banks’ leverage. Using banks in Hong Kong as an example, we find that the global liquidity effect is significant, and that mean reversion of banks’ leverage may under certain circumstances be more than offset by abundant global liquidity. Furthermore, we find that changes in global liquidity not only affect the level of leverage adjustment but also the adjustment speed of banks’ leverage.

Capital structure adjustment behaviors of Chinese listed companies: Evidence from the Split Share Structure Reform in China

The Split Share Structure Reform (SSSR) in China aims at reducing the agency problems between state owners and non-state shareholders via conversion of state-owned non-tradable shares into tradable shares, making state-owned shares sensitive to the stock market. The premise of the paper is that these changes would promote capital structure adjustments towards target leverage to maximize firm value. The evidence supports that the Split Share Structure Reform positively affects the leverage adjustment speeds of all firms after the share conversion. The firm level evidence indicates that the firms with better corporate governance mechanism featuring lower non-tradable state ownership and independent board adjust faster, and the firms with higher growth potential and bankruptcy risk also rebalance faster than the counterparts towards the optimal leverage. Nevertheless, entrenchment effect of concentrated ownership still dominates corporate structure decisions despite the reform.

Systematic risk and banks leverage: The role of asset quality

We analyse how bank asset quality interacts within the relationship between leverage and systematic risk. We elaborate three leverage adjustments for sterilizing the effect of provisioning and incorporating the effect of non-performing loans and total credit risk exposure. We test the model on a sample of 97 European banks from 2005 and 2016. Controlling for size, findings show the relevance of a combined effect of leverage and asset quality as a systematic risk component. NPLs are found to be one significant variable of market risk. Results demonstrate that simple leverage is pointless for verifying the financial riskiness of banks.

External cost of leverage adjustment: Evidence from defined benefit pension plans

This paper investigates the influence of external cost shock on the speed of adjustment (SOA) toward target capital structure. To look at the impact of an exogenous shock on the speed of adjustment, we employ mandatory contributions (MCs) of defined benefit (DB) pension plans as a measure of the external shock, and find a significant impact of MCs on SOA toward target leverage. This impact of MCs on SOA is negative and more significant for over-levered firms, whereas it is positive but less significant for under-levered firms. This result demonstrates that firms, especially over-levered firms, adjust to their target leverage actively rather than passively. Additionally, we show that this impact of MCs on SOA is heterogeneously determined for the firms with different levels of leverage volatility and managerial entrenchment. Our results are robust when using system GMM estimation to reduce the bias in estimation.

Media News Coverage and Corporate Leverage Adjustments

We examine the impact of the media on firms’ leverage adjustments. Using a comprehensive sample of global news across 33 countries, we find that greater news coverage and more positive news sentiment are associated with greater leverage adjustment speeds. This finding is consistent with the argument that media coverage and content help lower the cost of firms’ adjustment toward target leverage. We further find evidence supporting two mechanisms through which the news media affects leverage adjustments: information dissemination and monitoring. Overall, our results are consistent with the dynamic trade-off theory of capital structure.

Managerial Ability and the Speed of Leverage Adjustment

Managerial Ability and the Speed of Leverage Adjustment

Managerial Ability and the Speed of Leverage Adjustment

Managerial Ability and the Speed of Leverage Adjustment

The Leverage Ratchet Effect

ABSTRACTFirms’ inability to commit to future funding choices has profound consequences for capital structure dynamics. With debt in place, shareholders pervasively resist leverage reductions no matter how much such reductions may enhance firm value. Shareholders would instead choose to increase leverage even if the new debt is junior and would reduce firm value. These asymmetric forces in leverage adjustments, which we call the leverage ratchet effect, cause equilibrium leverage outcomes to be history‐dependent. If forced to reduce leverage, shareholders are biased toward selling assets relative to potentially more efficient alternatives such as pure recapitalizations.

Employment Protection and SME Capital Structure Decisions

This study examines the effect of employment protection (EP) on the capital structure of SMEs. We argue that EP is linked to both the level of leverage and leverage adjustments because of its impact on financial distress costs and a firm's operational leverage. Data on employment contract types allow us to compose company specific measures of exposure to EP using a panel data set of 14,858 Belgian SMEs between 2000 and 2012. Our results show that the leverage ratio of firms is higher and that firms are more likely to adjust leverage levels when they are subject to fewer EP obligations.

Bank connections and the speed of leverage adjustment: evidence from China's listed firms

AbstractThis study explores the role of bank connections as an important informal institution in debt contracting. Drawing on a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2004 to 2012, we find that bank connections, established through personal networks, asymmetrically affect the speed of leverage adjustment. Bank connections can reduce the marginal costs of leverage adjustment for under‐levered firms. We further find that such connections are especially important for firms with low levels of collateral and young firms, in areas with relatively underdeveloped financial markets, during periods of tight monetary policy, and when there is little competition in the banking industry.

The Interrelationships between REIT Capital Structure and Investment

We explore the interdependence of investment and financing choices in US listed Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in the period 1973–2011. We find that the investment and financing choices of REITs are interdependent, but they are not made simultaneously. Our results suggest that investment determines leverage, but leverage has no apparent effect on investment decisions. Conversely, the debt‐overhang conflict between shareholders and debt holders that theoretically drives the reverse influence of leverage on investment policy does not appear to filter through to the actual investment choices of REITs. Rather, we find that REIT managers utilize the maturity dimension of capital structure to mitigate potential investment distortions and ensure that investment remains on its value‐maximizing path. We also present novel evidence on the role of investments in driving a wedge between REIT target leverage and actual leverage levels, and on the interplay between investments and leverage adjustments toward the target ratio in explaining REIT capital structure dynamics.

The impact of interest rates on firms' financing policies

This study analyzes whether corporate financing policies of the US industrial firms have depended on borrowing costs during the last forty years. The results show that the impact is either zero or slightly negative. Even in the latter case, the results are economically insignificant. Overall, our findings suggest that firms do not adjust their capital structures based on interest rates, except when market participants expect that real gross domestic product growth will be negative. Using a dynamic partial equilibrium model, we show that relatively high leverage adjustment costs are able to explain the weak negative relation between interest rates and a firm's leverage. Our results are also consistent with the view that firms target debt-to-asset ratio rather than debt level.

Capital Structure Determinants of Small and Medium Capitalised Firms

This study investigates first, the determinants of the capital structure and second, the speed of adjustment of capital structure of small and medium capitalised firms in Europe before and during the sovereign debt crisis period. The sample includes 306 firms from 10 European countries comprising 2,142 firm-year observations for the period 2006 to 2013. After controlling the influence of macroeconomic factors, industry-level and firm-level on debt levels, we report that small and medium capitalised firms have adjusted their capital structure during the sovereign debt crisis period and the speed of adjustment was quicker in non-stressed countries compared to the firms in the stressed countries. Our results show that small and medium capitalised firms from non-stressed countries have reduced leverage ratios, whilst the leverage ratios of firms in stressed countries have increased during the crisis period. Our findings suggest that determinants of leverage for small and medium capitalised firms in Europe are; size and asset tangibility. Furthermore, industry-level determinant is industry median leverage and macroeconomic-level determinates are GDP growth rate and inflation rate. Our findings also show that the quality of countries’ institutional factors have significantly influenced the speed of adjustment of leverage of small and medium capitalised firms during the crisis period. The policy implications of the findings indicate that improving country’s institutional environment will ease small and medium capitalised firms’ financial difficulties, which in turn facilitate their economic performance.

CEO's Inside Debt and Dynamics of Capital Structure

Debt‐type compensation (inside debt) exacerbates the divergence in risk preferences between the chief executive officer (CEO) and shareholders and, in turn, affects capital structure decisions. An excessively risk‐averse CEO tends to use less debt than the shareholders desire, reduce debt quickly when the firm is overlevered, but is reluctant to increase debt when the firm is underlevered. We find that higher CEO's inside debt ratio (i.e., inside debt as a percentage of total incentive compensation) is associated with lower firm leverage and faster (slower) leverage adjustments toward the shareholders’ desired level for overlevered (underlevered) firms. The CEO's inside debt ratio most conducive to capital structure rebalancing is around 10% of the firm's market debt ratio.

Bank Competition and Leverage Adjustments

AbstractWe test whether bank competition affects firms’ leverage adjustment speeds. Using Chinese data where bank concentration varies across both years and provinces, we find that underlevered firms move to their target leverage faster when bank competition is high. Tests surrounding an exogenous shock to bank competition lead to the same conclusion. We also find that small firms and nonstate‐owned firms exhibit faster leverage adjustments when bank competition is high, which is consistent with the conjecture that bank risk taking increases with competition.

Global leverage adjustments, uncertainty, and country institutional strength

Abstract Using a broad range of uncertainty measures, we show that uncertainty dramatically slows down firms’ adjustments toward their optimal capital structure. At the upper bound, the estimated speed of leverage adjustments almost halves when uncertainty is high. High quality institutions (common law legal origin, more disclosure to congress and/or to the public, and higher public sector ethics) and presidential political systems offset some of the adverse effects of uncertainty on leverage adjustments. The financial crisis has altered the relationships among uncertainty, adjustment speeds, and a country's institutions; more so for countries with weak institutions and parliamentary systems.

Do firms have leverage targets? New evidence from mergers and acquisitions in China

We provide new and consistent evidence supporting the trade-off theory using China’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals between 2000 and 2015 as a sample. We show that acquirers do have leverage targets and they adjust their leverage ratios toward an optimal level at which the cost and benefit of the debt are equal. In examining the leverage adjustment speed during the post-acquisition period, we find that acquirers partially adjust their leverage ratios to the optimal levels; and the adjustment speed is affected by the adjustment cost proxied by the bankruptcy risk. Finally, we are able to successfully replicate the US evidence which is consistent with the trade-off theory as well using our improved methodology.

Global Leverage Adjustments, Uncertainty, and Country Institutional Strength

Using a broad range of uncertainty measures, we show that uncertainty dramatically slows down firms’ adjustments toward their optimal capital structure. At the upper bound, the estimated speed of leverage adjustments almost halves when uncertainty is high. High quality institutions (common law legal origin, more disclosure to congress and/or to the public, and higher public sector ethics) and presidential political systems offset some of the adverse effects of uncertainty on leverage adjustments. The financial crisis has altered the relationships among uncertainty, adjustment speeds, and a country’s institutions; more so for countries with weak institutions and parliamentary systems.

The Impact of Interest Rates on Firmss Financing Policies

This study analyzes whether corporate financing policies of the US industrial firms have depended on borrowing costs during the last forty years. The results show that the impact is either zero or slightly negative. Even in the latter case, the results are economically insignificant. Overall, our findings suggest that firms do not adjust their capital structures based on interest rates, except when market participants expect that real gross domestic product growth will be negative. Using a dynamic partial equilibrium model, we show that relatively high leverage adjustment costs are able to explain the weak negative relation between interest rates and a firm’s leverage. In general, our results are also consistent with the view that firms target debt-to-asset ratio rather than debt level.

Convertible Debt Issuance & Target Leverage Adjustments

I study the target leverage and partial adjustment activity of firms that issue convertible bonds. Convertibles may help target adjustment efforts by lowering issuance transaction costs and reducing interest expenses. Nevertheless, convertible debt can increase liabilities for an unknown amount of time until the bond matures or converts. Although the average issue greatly increases debt levels, I find that issuers - both above and below their target leverage - experience faster adjustments when convertible debt is offered. Firms continue to experience faster adjustments throughout the life of the convertible bond. The speed of adjustment results are robust to concurrent capital structure changes.