IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/reaccs/v16y2011i2d10.1007_s11142-011-9143-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bank debt covenants and firms’ responses to FAS 150 liability recognition: evidence from trust preferred stock

Author

Listed:
  • William Moser

    (University of Missouri)

  • Kaye Newberry

    (University of Houston)

  • Andy Puckett

    (University of Tennessee)

Abstract

We examine the relation between accounting-based debt contracts and the economic response of firms with trust preferred stock (TPS) to mandated liability recognition under Financial Accounting Standard (FAS) 150. Our results show that firms’ financial covenants significantly affect their choice to redeem versus reclassify their outstanding TPS. Specifically, firms with bank debt covenants that would be adversely impacted by recognizing TPS as a debt liability are 26.88% more likely to redeem their TPS after FAS 150. We also find that firms are significantly more likely to redeem versus reclassify their TPS after FAS 150 if they used the original TPS proceeds to retire existing debt (id est, to enhance their balance sheets). Our findings suggest that when bank debt contracts use “floating” Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to construct financial covenant terms, changes in the underlying GAAP measure significantly influence firms’ economic behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • William Moser & Kaye Newberry & Andy Puckett, 2011. "Bank debt covenants and firms’ responses to FAS 150 liability recognition: evidence from trust preferred stock," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 355-376, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:reaccs:v:16:y:2011:i:2:d:10.1007_s11142-011-9143-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11142-011-9143-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11142-011-9143-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11142-011-9143-x?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Holthausen, Robert W. & Leftwich, Richard W., 1983. "The economic consequences of accounting choice implications of costly contracting and monitoring," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 77-117, April.
    2. Guay, Wayne & Verrecchia, Robert, 2006. "Discussion of an economic framework for conservative accounting and Bushman and Piotroski (2006)," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 149-165, October.
    3. Holthausen, Robert W. & Watts, Ross L., 2001. "The relevance of the value-relevance literature for financial accounting standard setting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 3-75, September.
    4. Jeffrey D. Gramlich & William J. Mayew & Mary Lea McAnally, 2006. "Debt Reclassification and Capital Market Consequences," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(7-8), pages 1189-1212.
    5. Richard Frankel & Chandra Seethamraju & Tzachi Zach, 2008. "GAAP goodwill and debt contracting efficiency: evidence from net-worth covenants," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 87-118, March.
    6. Beatty, Anne & Weber, Joseph & Yu, Jeff Jiewei, 2008. "Conservatism and Debt," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 154-174, August.
    7. Jeffrey D. Gramlich & Mary Lea McAnally & Jacob Thomas, 2001. "Balance Sheet Management: The Case of Short‐Term Obligations Reclassified as Long‐Term Debt," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 283-295, September.
    8. Roberts, Michael R. & Sufi, Amir, 2009. "Renegotiation of financial contracts: Evidence from private credit agreements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 159-184, August.
    9. Fields, Thomas D. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Vincent, Linda, 2001. "Empirical research on accounting choice," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 255-307, September.
    10. Lillian F. Mills & Kaye J. Newberry, 2005. "Firms' Off‐Balance Sheet and Hybrid Debt Financing: Evidence from Their Book‐Tax Reporting Differences," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(2), pages 251-282, May.
    11. Paul Irvine & James Rosenfeld, 2000. "Raising Capital Using Monthly Income Preferred Stock: Market Reaction and Implications for Capital Structure Theory," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 29(2), Summer.
    12. Engel, E & Erickson, M & Maydew, E, 1999. "Debt-equity hybrid securities," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 249-274.
    13. Ryan Ball & Robert M. Bushman & Florin P. Vasvari, 2008. "The Debt‐Contracting Value of Accounting Information and Loan Syndicate Structure," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 46(2), pages 247-287, May.
    14. Ilia D. Dichev & Douglas J. Skinner, 2002. "Large–Sample Evidence on the Debt Covenant Hypothesis," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 1091-1123, September.
    15. Jeffrey D. Gramlich & William J. Mayew & Mary Lea McAnally, 2006. "Debt Reclassification and Capital Market Consequences," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(7‐8), pages 1189-1212, September.
    16. Ray Ball & Ashok Robin & Gil Sadka, 2008. "Is financial reporting shaped by equity markets or by debt markets? An international study of timeliness and conservatism," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 168-205, September.
    17. Beatty, Anne & Ramesh, K. & Weber, Joseph, 2002. "The importance of accounting changes in debt contracts: the cost of flexibility in covenant calculations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 205-227, June.
    18. Smith, Clifford Jr. & Warner, Jerold B., 1979. "On financial contracting : An analysis of bond covenants," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 117-161, June.
    19. Hopkins, PE, 1996. "The effect of financial statement classification of hybrid financial instruments on financial analysts' stock price judgments," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34, pages 33-50.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Kothari, S.P. & Ramanna, Karthik & Skinner, Douglas J., 2010. "Implications for GAAP from an analysis of positive research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 246-286, December.
    2. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Guay, Wayne R. & Weber, Joseph P., 2010. "The role of information and financial reporting in corporate governance and debt contracting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 179-234, December.
    3. Shai Levi & Benjamin Segal & Dan Segal, 2021. "Does fiduciary duty to creditors reduce debt covenant violation avoidance behavior?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5-6), pages 929-953, May.
    4. Nemit Shroff, 2017. "Corporate investment and changes in GAAP," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 1-63, March.
    5. Shai Levi & Benjamin Segal, 2015. "The Impact of Debt-Equity Reporting Classifications on the Firm's Decision to Issue Hybrid Securities," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(4), pages 801-822, December.
    6. Anne Beatty & Lin Cheng & Tzachi Zach, 2019. "Nonrecurring Items in Debt Contracts," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(1), pages 139-167, March.
    7. Beatty, Anne & Weber, Joseph & Yu, Jeff Jiewei, 2008. "Conservatism and Debt," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 154-174, August.
    8. Baylis, Richard M. & Burnap, Peter & Clatworthy, Mark A. & Gad, Mahmoud A. & Pong, Christopher K.M., 2017. "Private lenders’ demand for audit," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 78-97.
    9. Wittenberg-Moerman, Regina, 2008. "The role of information asymmetry and financial reporting quality in debt trading: Evidence from the secondary loan market," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2-3), pages 240-260, December.
    10. Freudenberg, Felix & Imbierowicz, Björn & Saunders, Anthony & Steffen, Sascha, 2017. "Covenant violations and dynamic loan contracting," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 540-565.
    11. Yiwei Dou, 2020. "The Debt-Contracting Value of Accounting Numbers and Financial Covenant Renegotiation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(3), pages 1124-1148, March.
    12. Valeri V. Nikolaev, 2010. "Debt Covenants and Accounting Conservatism," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 48(1), pages 137-176, March.
    13. Chengru Hu & Wei Jiang, 2019. "Managerial risk incentives and accounting conservatism," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 781-813, April.
    14. Kravet, Todd D., 2014. "Accounting conservatism and managerial risk-taking: Corporate acquisitions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 218-240.
    15. Rhodes, Adrienne, 2016. "The relation between earnings-based measures in firm debt contracts and CEO pay sensitivity to earnings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 1-22.
    16. Annita Florou & Urska Kosi, 2015. "Does mandatory IFRS adoption facilitate debt financing?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 1407-1456, December.
    17. Daniel Bens & Sterling Huang & Liang Tan & Wan Wongsunwai, 2020. "Contracting and Reporting Conservatism around a Change in Fiduciary Duties," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(4), pages 2472-2500, December.
    18. Costello, Anna M., 2013. "Mitigating incentive conflicts in inter-firm relationships: Evidence from long-term supply contracts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 19-39.
    19. Anna M. Costello & Regina Wittenberg‐Moerman*, 2011. "The Impact of Financial Reporting Quality on Debt Contracting: Evidence from Internal Control Weakness Reports," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 49(1), pages 97-136, March.
    20. Isin, Adnan Anil, 2018. "Tax avoidance and cost of debt: The case for loan-specific risk mitigation and public debt financing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 344-378.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:spr:reaccs:v:16:y:2011:i:2:d:10.1007_s11142-011-9143-x. 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://www.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.