IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpwp/99-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financial contracts and the legal treatment of informed investors

Author

Listed:
  • Mitchell Berlin
  • Loretta J. Mester

Abstract

The authors explore the economic rationale for equitable subordination, a legal doctrine that permits a firm's claimants to seek to subordinate an informed investor's financial claim in bankruptcy court. Fear of equitable subordination is often cited as a reason that banks in the U.S. are wary of taking an active management role in their borrowing firms. The authors show that an optimally designed menu of claims for a large investor will include features that resemble equitable subordination. The authors' model provides a partial rationale for a financial system in which powerful creditors do not generally hold blended debt and equity claims.

Suggested Citation

  • Mitchell Berlin & Loretta J. Mester, 1999. "Financial contracts and the legal treatment of informed investors," Working Papers 99-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:99-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-papers/1999/wp99-8.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:3:p:567-91 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    3. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 1992. "An Incomplete Contracts Approach to Financial Contracting," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(3), pages 473-494.
    4. Berkovitch, Elazar & Israel, Ronen & Zender, Jaime F., 1998. "The Design of Bankruptcy Law: A Case for Management Bias in Bankruptcy Reorganizations," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(4), pages 441-464, December.
    5. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    6. Franklin Allen & Andrew Winton, "undated". "Corporate Financial Structure, Incentives and Optimal Contracting (Reprint 049)," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 15-94, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    7. Admati, Anat R & Pfleiderer, Paul, 1994. "Robust Financial Contracting and the Role of Venture Capitalists," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(2), pages 371-402, June.
    8. Mike Burkart & Denis Gromb & Fausto Panunzi, 1997. "Large Shareholders, Monitoring, and the Value of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 693-728.
    9. Stulz, ReneM., 1990. "Managerial discretion and optimal financing policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 3-27, July.
    10. Berkovitch, Elazar & Israel, Ronen, 1999. "Optimal Bankruptcy Laws across Different Economic Systems," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 347-377.
    11. Zender, Jaime F, 1991. "Optimal Financial Instruments," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1645-1663, December.
    12. Mathias Dewatripont & Jean Tirole, 1994. "A Theory of Debt and Equity: Diversity of Securities and Manager-Shareholder Congruence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1027-1054.
    13. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1995. "The Role of Games in Security Design," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(2), pages 327-367.
    14. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:2:p:635-672 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Erik Berglöf & Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden, 1994. "Short-Term versus Long-Term Interests: Capital Structure with Multiple Investors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1055-1084.
    16. Randall S. Kroszner & Philip E. Strahan, 1999. "Bankers on Boards: Monitoring, Conflicts of Interest, and Lender Liability," NBER Working Papers 7319, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Berlin, Mitchell & John, Kose & Saunders, Anthony, 1996. "Bank Equity Stakes in Borrowing Firms and Financial Distress," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(3), pages 889-919.
    18. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1995. "Debt and Seniority: An Analysis of the Role of Hard Claims in Constraining Management," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 567-585, June.
    19. Kalay, Avner & Zender, Jaime F., 1997. "Bankruptcy, Warrants, and State-Contingent Changes in the Ownership of Control," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 347-379, October.
    20. Thakor, Anjan V., 1996. "The design of financial systems: An overview," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 917-948, June.
    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. Mitchell Berlin & Loretta J. Mester, 2000. "Optimal financial contracts for large investors: the role of lender liability," Working Papers 00-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    2. Berlin, Mitchell & Mester, Loretta J., 2001. "Lender Liability and Large Investors," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 108-137, April.
    3. Anderson, Ronald W. & Nyborg, Kjell G., 2011. "Financing and corporate growth under repeated moral hazard," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 1-24, January.
    4. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    5. Oliver Hart, 2001. "Financial Contracting," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1079-1100, December.
    6. Stein, Jeremy C., 2003. "Agency, information and corporate investment," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 111-165, Elsevier.
    7. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    8. Guembel, Alexander & White, Lucy, 2014. "Good cop, bad cop: Complementarities between debt and equity in disciplining management," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 541-569.
    9. Becht, Marco & Bolton, Patrick & Roell, Ailsa, 2003. "Corporate governance and control," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 1-109, Elsevier.
    10. Steven N. Kaplan & Per Strömberg, 2003. "Financial Contracting Theory Meets the Real World: An Empirical Analysis of Venture Capital Contracts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(2), pages 281-315.
    11. 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.
    12. Tirole, Jean, 2001. "Corporate Governance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 1-35, January.
    13. Ruhnke, Carsten S., 2022. "Implications of the Creditors' Influence on Corporate Decisions," Junior Management Science (JUMS), Junior Management Science e. V., vol. 7(1), pages 150-184.
    14. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    15. Ernst-Ludwig VON THADDEN & Erik BERGLÖF & Gérard ROLAND, 2003. "Optimal Debt Design and the Role of Bankruptcy," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 03.13, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    16. M. M. Buehlmaier, Matthias, 2014. "Debt, equity, and information," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 54-62.
    17. Tan, Liang, 2013. "Creditor control rights, state of nature verification, and financial reporting conservatism," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 1-22.
    18. Ansgar Wohlschlegel, 2006. "Bankruptcy law and financial structure: The impact of managerial incentives," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 333-345.
    19. Jayati Sarkar & Subrata Sarkar, 2005. "Debt and corporate governance in emerging economies: Evidence from India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2005-007, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    20. Aiyesha Dey & Valeri Nikolaev & Xue Wang, 2016. "Disproportional Control Rights and the Governance Role of Debt," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(9), pages 2581-2614, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bankruptcy;

    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:fip:fedpwp:99-8. 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: Beth Paul (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbphus.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.