IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/rqfnac/v48y2017i4d10.1007_s11156-016-0571-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corporate financing and anticipated credit rating changes

Author

Listed:
  • Chi-Hsiou D. Hung

    (University of Glasgow)

  • Anurag Banerjee

    (Durham University)

  • Qingrui Meng

    (Durham University)

Abstract

Firm circumstances change but rating agencies may not make timely revisions to their ratings, thereby increasing information asymmetry between firms and the market. We examine whether firms time the securities market before a credit rating agency publicly reveals its decision to change a firm’s credit rating. Using quarterly data, we show that firms adjust their financing structures before credit rating downgrades are publicly revealed. Specifically, firms on average increase their debt financing by 1.29 % before the disclosure of a rating downgrade, and this increase is due to the issuance of debt rather than the repurchase of equity. In contrast, firms do not take significant financing actions before credit rating upgrades.

Suggested Citation

  • Chi-Hsiou D. Hung & Anurag Banerjee & Qingrui Meng, 2017. "Corporate financing and anticipated credit rating changes," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 893-915, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:48:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s11156-016-0571-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11156-016-0571-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11156-016-0571-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11156-016-0571-3?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. King, Gary & Zeng, Langche, 2001. "Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 137-163, January.
    2. Hand, John R M & Holthausen, Robert W & Leftwich, Richard W, 1992. "The Effect of Bond Rating Agency Announcements on Bond and Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 733-752, June.
    3. Titman, Sheridan & Wessels, Roberto, 1988. " The Determinants of Capital Structure Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(1), pages 1-19, March.
    4. Amy Dittmar & Anjan Thakor, 2007. "Why Do Firms Issue Equity?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 1-54, February.
    5. DeAngelo, Harry & Masulis, Ronald W., 1980. "Optimal capital structure under corporate and personal taxation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 3-29, March.
    6. Bradley, Michael & Jarrell, Gregg A & Kim, E Han, 1984. "On the Existence of an Optimal Capital Structure: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 857-878, July.
    7. Allen N. Berger & Marco A. Espinosa‐Vega & W. Scott Frame & Nathan H. Miller, 2005. "Debt Maturity, Risk, and Asymmetric Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2895-2923, December.
    8. Arnoud W. A. Boot & Todd T. Milbourn & Anjolein Schmeits, 2006. "Credit Ratings as Coordination Mechanisms," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 81-118.
    9. Kee H. Chung, 2000. "Marketing of Stocks by BrokerageFirms: The Role of Financial Analysts," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 29(2), Summer.
    10. Eugene F. Fama, 2002. "Testing Trade-Off and Pecking Order Predictions About Dividends and Debt," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    11. J.S. Cramer, 2005. "Omitted Variables and Misspecified Disturbances in the Logit Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 05-084/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Holthausen, Robert W. & Leftwich, Richard W., 1986. "The effect of bond rating changes on common stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 57-89, September.
    13. Kisgen, Darren J., 2009. "Do Firms Target Credit Ratings or Leverage Levels?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(6), pages 1323-1344, December.
    14. Min Maung & Reza H. Chowdhury, 2014. "Credit Rating Changes and Leverage Adjustments: Concurrent or Continual?," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(04), pages 1-29.
    15. Stewart C. Myers, 2001. "Capital Structure," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 81-102, Spring.
    16. Myers, Stewart C., 1984. "Capital structure puzzle," Working papers 1548-84., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    17. Marsh, Paul, 1982. "The Choice between Equity and Debt: An Empirical Study," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(1), pages 121-144, March.
    18. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2005. "Financing decisions: who issues stock?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 549-582, June.
    19. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1995. "What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1421-1460, December.
    20. Myers, Stewart C, 1984. "The Capital Structure Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 575-592, July.
    21. Frank, Murray Z. & Goyal, Vidhan K., 2003. "Testing the pecking order theory of capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 217-248, February.
    22. Kim, Chang-Soo & Mauer, David C. & Sherman, Ann E., 1998. "The Determinants of Corporate Liquidity: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(3), pages 335-359, September.
    23. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R., 2001. "The theory and practice of corporate finance: evidence from the field," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 187-243, May.
    24. Arthur Korteweg, 2010. "The Net Benefits to Leverage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(6), pages 2137-2170, December.
    25. Stewart C. Myers, 1984. "Capital Structure Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 1393, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Doron Kliger & Oded Sarig, 2000. "The Information Value of Bond Ratings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(6), pages 2879-2902, December.
    27. Darren J. Kisgen, 2006. "Credit Ratings and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1035-1072, June.
    28. Asquith, Paul & Mullins, David Jr., 1986. "Equity issues and offering dilution," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1-2), pages 61-89.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jun Guo & Pinghsun Huang & Yan Zhang, 2019. "Do debt covenant violations serve as a risk factor of ineffective internal control?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 231-251, January.
    2. Florian Kiesel & Sascha Kolaric, 2018. "Measuring the effect of watch-preceded and direct rating changes: a note on credit markets," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 653-672, February.
    3. Kiesel, F. & Kolaric, S., 2018. "Measuring the effect of watch-preceded and direct rating changes: a note on credit markets," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 87386, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    4. Emmanuel Alanis & Janet Payne & Joerg Picard, 2020. "Managing For Ratings: Real Effects Of A Corporate Ratings Criteria Change," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 43(4), pages 821-845, December.
    5. Winnie P. H. Poon & Jianfu Shen, 2020. "The roles of rating outlooks: the predictor of creditworthiness and the monitor of recovery efforts," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1063-1091, October.
    6. Bruno Figlioli & Rafael Moreira Antonio & Fabiano Guasti Lima, 2019. "Stock Price Synchronicity and Current and Potential Credit Ratings," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(10), pages 1-16, October.
    7. Ala’a Adden Abuhommous & Ahmad Salim Alsaraireh & Huthaifa Alqaralleh, 2022. "The impact of working capital management on credit rating," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-20, December.
    8. Pertaia, Giorgi & Prokhorov, Artem & Uryasev, Stan, 2022. "A new approach to credit ratings," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    9. Abu Jalal & Shahriar Khaksari, 2019. "Effects of tuition discounting on university’s financial performance," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 439-466, February.
    10. Tabash, Mosab I. & Farooq, Umar & Ashfaq, Khurram & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and financing structure: A new panel data evidence from selected Asian economies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    11. Yuchao Fan, 2022. "Dissecting the dot-com bubble in the 1990s NASDAQ," Papers 2206.14130, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shoaib Ali & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2015. "Relationship between Credit Rating, Capital Structure and Earning Management Behaviour: Evidence from Pakistani Listed Firms," PIDE-Working Papers 2015:121, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    2. Zeeshan Ahmed & Qasim Saleem & Abdul Qadir Bhatti & Bilal Ahmed, 2020. "Corporate Leverage Transmission under Information Asymmetry: Evidence from Non-financial Firms of Pakistan," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(4), pages 176-184.
    3. Clemente-Almendros, José A. & Sogorb-Mira, Francisco, 2018. "Costs of debt, tax benefits and a new measure of non-debt tax shields: examining debt conservatism in Spanish listed firms," Revista de Contabilidad - Spanish Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 162-175.
    4. Leary, Mark T. & Roberts, Michael R., 2010. "The pecking order, debt capacity, and information asymmetry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 332-355, March.
    5. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2012. "Market timing, taxes and capital structure: evidence from Vietnam," OSF Preprints t3mvs, Center for Open Science.
    6. Saumitra, Bhaduri, 2012. "Why do firms issue equity? Some evidence from an emerging economy, India," MPRA Paper 38043, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Attaullah Shah & Jasir Ilyas, 2014. "Is Negative Profitability-Leverage Relation the only Support for the Pecking Order Theory in Case of Pakistani Firms?," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 53(1), pages 33-55.
    8. Elsas, Ralf & Florysiak, David, 2008. "Empirical Capital Structure Research: New Ideas, Recent Evidence, and Methodological Issues," Discussion Papers in Business Administration 4743, University of Munich, Munich School of Management.
    9. Viet Anh Dang, 2013. "Testing capital structure theories using error correction models: evidence from the UK, France and Germany," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(2), pages 171-190, January.
    10. Pinnuck, Matt & Shekhar, Chander, 2013. "The profit versus loss heuristic and firm financing decisions," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 420-439.
    11. Viet Anh Dang, 2005. "Testing the Trade-off and Pecking Order Theory: Some UK Evidence," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2005 28, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    12. Imran Yousaf & Arshad Hassan, 2016. "Effect of Family Control on Corporate Financing Decisions: A Case of Pakistan," PIDE-Working Papers 2016:138, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    13. Mário Santos & António Moreira & Elisabete Vieira, 2014. "Ownership concentration, contestability, family firms, and capital structure," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 18(4), pages 1063-1107, November.
    14. Sjur Westgaard & Amund Eidet & Stein Frydenberg & Thor Christian Grosås, 2008. "Investigating the Capital Structure of UK Real Estate Companies," Journal of Property Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 61-87, August.
    15. Harford, Jarrad & Klasa, Sandy & Walcott, Nathan, 2009. "Do firms have leverage targets? Evidence from acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-14, July.
    16. Mohamed Soufeljil & Asma Sghaier & Zouhayer Mighri & Hanène Kheireddine, 2017. "The financial structure of the Tunisian listed businesses: an application on panel data," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 7(1), pages 1-25, December.
    17. Bolton, Patrick & Li, Ye & Wang, Neng & Yang, Jinqiang, 2020. "Dynamic Banking and the Value of Deposits," Working Paper Series 2020-13, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    18. Murray Z. Frank & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 1-37, March.
    19. Kayhan, Ayla & Titman, Sheridan, 2007. "Firms' histories and their capital structures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 1-32, January.
    20. Maria Angelina Valadares Silva & António Melo Cerqueira & Elísio Brandão, 2017. "The Determinants of Capital Structure: Evidence from Non-financial Listed German Companies," FEP Working Papers 588, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit rating downgrades; Credit rating upgrades; Information asymmetry; Capital structure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    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:kap:rqfnac:v:48:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s11156-016-0571-3. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://springer.com .

    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.