IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jaecon/v61y2016i2p274-293.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The association between corporate general counsel and firm credit risk

Author

Listed:
  • Ham, Charles
  • Koharki, Kevin

Abstract

This paper examines whether bond market participants alter their credit risk assessments of firms that appoint the corporate general counsel (GC) to senior management. GCs may place less emphasis on their gatekeeping responsibilities upon appointment to senior management, thus potentially resulting in increased firm credit risk. Using changes in firm-level credit ratings and credit default swap spreads to proxy for changes in credit risk, we find a positive association between GC promotions to senior management and increases in firm credit risk. Additionally, the increased personal liability for GCs under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act only partially mitigates this association.

Suggested Citation

  • Ham, Charles & Koharki, Kevin, 2016. "The association between corporate general counsel and firm credit risk," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 274-293.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:61:y:2016:i:2:p:274-293
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2016.01.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165410116000033
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jacceco.2016.01.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pham, Mia Hang, 2020. "In law we trust: Lawyer CEOs and stock liquidity," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    2. SAKO Mari & KUBO Katsuyuki, 2019. "Professionals on Corporate Boards: How do they affect the bottom line?," Discussion papers 19010, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    3. Habib Zaman Khan & Muhammad Nurul Houqe & Ielemia K Ielemia, 2023. "Organic versus cosmetic efforts of the quality of carbon reporting by top New Zealand firms. Does market reward or penalise?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 686-703, January.
    4. Osama Wagdi & Yasmeen Tarek, 2022. "The Integration of Big Data and Artificial Neural Networks for Enhancing Credit Risk Scoring in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Egypt," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 14(2), pages 1-32, February.
    5. Zhao, Sheng & Moreira, Fernando & Wang, Tong, 2021. "Is solicitation status related to rating conservatism and rating quality?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    6. Papadimitri, Panagiota & Pasiouras, Fotios & Tasiou, Menelaos & Ventouri, Alexia, 2020. "The effects of board of directors’ education on firms’ credit ratings," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 294-313.
    7. Michael, Michael & Ali, Muhammad Jahangir & Atawnah, Nader & Muniandy, Balachandran, 2022. "Fiduciary or loyalty? Evidence from top management counsel and stock liquidity," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    8. Mari Sako & Katsuyuki Kubo, 2018. "Professionals On Corporate Boards In Japan: How Do They Affect The Bottom Line?," Working Papers halshs-01770191, HAL.
    9. Yu Zhao & Huaming Du & Qing Li & Fuzhen Zhuang & Ji Liu & Gang Kou, 2022. "A Comprehensive Survey on Enterprise Financial Risk Analysis from Big Data Perspective," Papers 2211.14997, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    10. John Donovan & Jared Jennings & Kevin Koharki & Joshua Lee, 2021. "Measuring credit risk using qualitative disclosure," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 815-863, June.
    11. Safiullah, Md & Kabir, Md. Nurul & Miah, Mohammad Dulal, 2021. "Carbon emissions and credit ratings," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    12. Dang, Man & Puwanenthiren, Premkanth & Jones, Edward & Nguyen, Thieu Quang & Vo, Xuan Vinh & Nadarajah, Sivathaasan, 2022. "Strategic archetypes, credit ratings, and cost of debt," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    13. Steven Balsam & So Yean Kwack, 2022. "The impact of connections between the CEO and top executives on appointment, turnover and firm value," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(5-6), pages 882-933, May.
    14. Safiullah, Md & Alam, Md Samsul & Islam, Md Shahidul, 2022. "Do all institutional investors care about corporate carbon emissions?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit risk; Credit rating agency; General counsel;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • M40 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:61:y:2016:i:2:p:274-293. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jae .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.