IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/cbsfin/2004_009.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Pricing of Step-Up Bonds in the European Telecom Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Lando, David

    (Department of Finance, Copenhagen Business School)

  • Mortensen, Allan

    (Department of Finance, Copenhagen Business School)

Abstract

This paper investigates the pricing of step-up bonds, i.e. corporate bonds with provisions stating that the coupon payments increase as the credit rating level of the issuer declines. To assess the risk-neutral rating transition probabilities necessary to price these bonds, we introduce a new calibration method within the reduced-form rating-based model of Jarrow, Lando, and Turnbull (1997). We also treat split ratings and adjust for rating outlook. Step-up bonds have been issued in large amounts in the European telecom sector, and we find that, through most of the sample, step-up bonds issued by the two largest issuers have traded at a discount relative to comparable fixed-coupon bonds from the same issuers. Our findings cannot be attributed to traditional liquidity factors, and they suggest that issuing step-up bonds increased the cost of capital for the issuers.

Suggested Citation

  • Lando, David & Mortensen, Allan, 2004. "On the Pricing of Step-Up Bonds in the European Telecom Sector," Working Papers 2004-9, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:cbsfin:2004_009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://openarchive.cbs.dk/cbsweb/handle/10398/7184
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Houweling, Patrick & Mentink, Albert & Vorst, Ton, 2005. "Comparing possible proxies of corporate bond liquidity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1331-1358, June.
    2. Leland, Hayne E, 1994. "Corporate Debt Value, Bond Covenants, and Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1213-1252, September.
    3. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    4. Edwin J. Elton & Martin J. Gruber & Deepak Agrawal & Christopher Mann, 2001. "Explaining the Rate Spread on Corporate Bonds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 247-277, February.
    5. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    6. Barry, Christopher B. & Brown, Stephen J., 1985. "Differential Information and Security Market Equilibrium," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(4), pages 407-422, December.
    7. Jordan, Bradford D & Jordan, Susan D, 1997. "Special Repo Rates: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(5), pages 2051-2072, December.
    8. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1999. "Modeling Term Structures of Defaultable Bonds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 687-720.
    9. Robert A. Jarrow & David Lando & Stuart M. Turnbull, 2008. "A Markov Model for the Term Structure of Credit Risk Spreads," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 18, pages 411-453, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Merton, Robert C, 1987. "A Simple Model of Capital Market Equilibrium with Incomplete Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 483-510, July.
    11. Gregory R. Duffee, 1998. "The Relation Between Treasury Yields and Corporate Bond Yield Spreads," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(6), pages 2225-2241, December.
    12. Bangia, Anil & Diebold, Francis X. & Kronimus, Andre & Schagen, Christian & Schuermann, Til, 2002. "Ratings migration and the business cycle, with application to credit portfolio stress testing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2-3), pages 445-474, March.
    13. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    14. Robert A. Jarrow & Stuart M. Turnbull, 2008. "Pricing Derivatives on Financial Securities Subject to Credit Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 17, pages 377-409, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Gustavo Manso & Bruno Strulovici & Alexei Tchistyi, 2010. "Performance-Sensitive Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 1819-1854.
    16. Amihud, Yakov & Mendelson, Haim, 1991. "Liquidity, Maturity, and the Yields on U.S. Treasury Securities," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1411-1425, September.
    17. Masaaki Kijima, 1998. "Monotonicities in a Markov Chain Model for Valuing Corporate Bonds Subject to Credit Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(3), pages 229-247, July.
    18. Longstaff, Francis A & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1995. "A Simple Approach to Valuing Risky Fixed and Floating Rate Debt," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 789-819, July.
    19. Lando, David & Skodeberg, Torben M., 2002. "Analyzing rating transitions and rating drift with continuous observations," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2-3), pages 423-444, March.
    20. Das, Sanjiv Ranjan & Acharya, Viral & Sundaram, Rangarajan K, 2002. "Pricing Credit Derivatives with Rating Transitions," CEPR Discussion Papers 3329, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    21. Pierre Collin-Dufresn & Robert S. Goldstein & J. Spencer Martin, 2001. "The Determinants of Credit Spread Changes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2177-2207, December.
    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. Sarkar, Sudipto & Zhang, Chuanqian, 2015. "Underinvestment and the design of performance-sensitive debt," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 240-253.
    2. Bank, Matthias & Kupfer, Alexander, 2014. "A sequential pricing framework for corporate securities: The case of rating-trigger step-up/-down bonds," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 437-445.
    3. Bruno Biais & Thomas Mariotti & Guillaume Plantin & Jean-Charles Rochet, 2007. "Dynamic Security Design: Convergence to Continuous Time and Asset Pricing Implications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 345-390.
    4. Myklebust, Tor Åge, 2012. "Performance Sensitive Debt - Investment and Financing Incentives," Discussion Papers 2012/7, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    5. Koziol, Christian & Lawrenz, Jochen, 2010. "Optimal design of rating-trigger step-up bonds: Agency conflicts versus asymmetric information," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 182-204, April.
    6. Sudipto Sarkar & Chuanqian Zhang, 2016. "Loan-commitment borrowing and performance-sensitive debt," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 973-986, November.

    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. Ericsson, Jan & Jacobs, Kris & Oviedo, Rodolfo, 2009. "The Determinants of Credit Default Swap Premia," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 109-132, February.
    2. Brian BARNARD, 2017. "Rating Migration and Bond Valuation: Decomposing Rating Migration Matrices from Market Data via Default Probability Term Structures," Expert Journal of Finance, Sprint Investify, vol. 5(1), pages 49-72.
    3. Guo, Liang, 2013. "Determinants of credit spreads: The role of ambiguity and information uncertainty," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 279-297.
    4. Brian BARNARD, 2018. "Rating Migration and Bond Valuation: Ahistorical Interest Rate and Default Probability Term Structures," Expert Journal of Finance, Sprint Investify, vol. 6(1), pages 16-30.
    5. Brian BARNARD, 2017. "Rating Migration and Bond Valuation: Decomposing Rating Migration Matrices from Market Data via Default Probability Term Structures," Expert Journal of Finance, Sprint Investify, vol. 5, pages 49-72.
    6. Bhanu Pratap Singh Thakur & M. Kannadhasan & Vinay Goyal, 2018. "Determinants of corporate credit spread: evidence from India," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 45(1), pages 59-73, March.
    7. Diaz Weigel, Diana & Gemmill, Gordon, 2006. "What drives credit risk in emerging markets? The roles of country fundamentals and market co-movements," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 476-502, April.
    8. Giesecke, Kay & Longstaff, Francis A. & Schaefer, Stephen & Strebulaev, Ilya, 2011. "Corporate bond default risk: A 150-year perspective," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 233-250.
    9. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    10. Duffie, Darrell, 2005. "Credit risk modeling with affine processes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 2751-2802, November.
    11. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    12. Maclachlan, Iain C, 2007. "An empirical study of corporate bond pricing with unobserved capital structure dynamics," MPRA Paper 28416, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Ephraim Clark & Selima Baccar, 2018. "Modelling credit spreads with time volatility, skewness, and kurtosis," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 262(2), pages 431-461, March.
    14. repec:wyi:journl:002109 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Antonio Trujillo-Ponce & Reyes Samaniego-Medina & Clara Cardone-Riportella, 2014. "Examining what best explains corporate credit risk: accounting-based versus market-based models," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 253-276, April.
    16. Abudy, Menachem Meni & Raviv, Alon, 2016. "How much can illiquidity affect corporate debt yield spread?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 58-69.
    17. Samir Kadiric & Arthur Korus, 2019. "The effects of Brexit on credit spreads: Evidence from UK and Eurozone corporate bond markets," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 65-102, March.
    18. Ming Fang & Rui Zhong, 2004. "Default Risk, Firm's Characteristics, and Risk Shifting," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2461, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Mar 2005.
    19. Viral V. Acharya & Jennifer N. Carpenter, 2002. "Corporate Bond Valuation and Hedging with Stochastic Interest Rates and Endogenous Bankruptcy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(5), pages 1355-1383.
    20. Stephanie Heck, 2022. "Corporate bond yields and returns: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 36(2), pages 179-201, June.
    21. Samir Kadiric & Arthur Korus, 2018. "Effects of Brexit on Corporate Yield Spreads: Evidence from UK and Eurozone Corporate Bond Markets," EIIW Discussion paper disbei251, Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    defaultable bonds; step-up coupons; rating-based models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:cbsfin:2004_009. 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: Lars Nondal (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbschdk.html .

    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.