Using data on the universe of US-based mutual funds, we find that two out of five fund families hold corporate bonds of firms in which they also own an equity stake. We show that the greater the fraction of debt a fund family holds in a given...Read more
We study transactions in which sellers fears being underpaid because their outside option is better known to the buyer. We rationalize various observed contracts as solutions to such smart buyer problems. Key to these solutions is granting the...Read more
We use an important legal event as a natural experiment to examine the effect of management fiduciary duties on equity-debt conflicts. A 1991 Delaware bankruptcy ruling changed the nature of corporate directors’ fiduciary duties in firms...Read more
Should preferred stock be treated under corporate law as an equity interest in the issuing corporation or under contract law as a senior security? Should a preferred certificate of designation subsumed in the corporate charter and treated as an...Read more
We find that the number of independent directors on corporate boards increases by approximately 24% following financial covenant violations in credit agreements. Most of these new directors have links to creditors. Firms that appoint new...Read more
A corporate bond market is thought to play an important role as a supplement to bankoriented financial systems in emerging markets ? functioning in effect as a ?spare tire.? Yet bond markets typically rely upon a formal institutional foundation...Read more
In this paper, I examine the strategic role of debt structure in improving the bargaining position of a firm’s management relative to its non-financial stakeholders. Debt structure is essential for strategic bargaining because it affects the ease...Read more
Bond workouts are a famously dysfunctional method of debt restructuring, ridden with opportunistic and coercive behavior by bondholders and bond issuers. Yet since 2008 bond workouts have quietly started to work. A cognizable portion of the...Read more
We investigate whether a firm’s social capital, and the trust that it engenders, are viewed favorably by bondholders. Using firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to proxy for social capital, we find...Read more
We study the impact of underwriter competition on corporate bond contracts. We develop a new measure of underwriter power and a novel empirical approach, based on the underwriter’s comparative ability to place bonds. When an issuer has few “...Read more
We examine the effects of a law amendment in Israel in 2011 that imposes a set of minimum corporate governance standards on privately held firms that issue publicly traded bonds. Two main results emerge. First, consistent with US evidence, the...Read more