This paper examines pricing behavior for bonds issued by bank holding companies in the period prior to failure of their bank subsidiaries. The results indicate that bond prices are related to the financial condition of the issuing bank holding companies, and that bonds spreads start rising as early as six quarters prior to failure as the issuing firm's financial condition and credit rating deteriorate. Strong market discipline exists during the critical period -- bond spreads for troubled banking organizations are many times those of healthy ones. Our results suggests that bond spreads could potentially be useful to bank supervisors as a warning signal from the financial markets. In addition, our finding implies that the proposals to require bank holding companies to issue publicly traded debt in a greater volume and frequency will likely enhance market discipline in the banking system when it is most needed.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in its journal Emerging Issues.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)