Takeover risk and the correlation between stocks and bonds
Abstract
Existing research suggests that, for a given firm, stock returns and bond prices are positively related, and this implies a negative relation between stock returns and bond spreads. In this paper, we show how takeover risk influences this relation. Bondholders of high-rated firms can suffer losses in a takeover, particularly if the takeover is largely funded with debt, resulting in a more positive (or less negative) correlation between stock returns and bond spread changes. Consistent with this notion and based on a large sample of data covering the period from 1980 to 2000, we find that high-rated firms which are likely to be taken over have a more positive correlation between stock returns and bond spread changes, while target firms with a poison put or an indebtedness covenant have a more negative correlation. Overall, our findings have implications for the pricing and hedging of bonds and default risk based financial products such as credit default swaps.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Empirical Finance.
Volume (Year): 17 (2010)
Issue (Month): 3 (June)
Pages: 381-393
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jempfin
Related research
Keywords: Stock-bond correlation Takeover probability Debt covenants;References
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