Contributions published at Banking (Steven Ongena)

Banks play a special role as providers of informative signals about the quality and value of their borrowers. Such signals, however, may have a quality of their own as the banks’ selection and monitoring abilities may differ. Using an event study methodology, we study the importance of the geographical origin and organization of the banks for the investors’ assessments of firms’ credit quality and economic worth following loan announcements. Our sample comprises 986 announcements of bank loans to US firms over the period of 1980–2003. We find that investors react positively to such announcements if the loans are made by foreign or local banks, but not if the loans are made by banks that are located outside the firm’s headquarters state. Investor reaction is, in fact, the largest when the bank is foreign. Our evidence suggest that investors value relationships with more competitive and skilled banks rather than banks that have easier access to private information about the firms. These results are applicable also to the European markets where regulatory and economic borders do not coincide and bank identities and reputation seem to matter a great deal.

Il numero delle società quotate in italia è scarso rispetto al potenziale, a causa dell’assenza delle imprese di piccola capitalizzazione. Anche in termini qualitativi la borsa italiana appare poco rappresentativa del tessuto produttivo e delle eccellenze nazionali, data la rilevanza assunta dai comparti finanziario e minerario, cui si contrappone la sottorappresentazione dei settori distributivo, alimentare e tessile. Rispetto all’intera economia, le imprese quotate crescono e occupano di più e meglio, investono di più in r&d, hanno strutture finanziarie più equilibrate e sono più propense al m&a. Un aumento del numero delle imprese quotate potrebbe portare contributi positivi alla crescita reale, all’occupazione e al gettito fiscale.

How best to measure banking competition? The empirical banking literature typically resorts to well-known concentration measures such as the Herfindahl–Hirschman index, or performance indicators like the Lerner or Boone indexes. While these have their merits, none of them explicitly takes into account that banks may actively compete with some banks but not with others. This chapter presents micro evidence on the determinants of such dyadic banking competition, and argues that this concept can advance our understanding of how banking competition affects firms’ access to credit.

The depth of the recent financial crisis is often attributed to excessively high leverage of corporations and banks. This column analyses corporate leverage in the long-run, and in particular the shift from bilateral to multilateral firm-bank relationships in the UK. This shift is related to the firms’ use of debt finance, and subsequently to their increased leverage

Recent research has found evidence of the central role of trade credit in the financing of small businesses. In the United States, for example, trade credit is used by about 60 percent of small businesses; such a large incidence of use is not observed in any other financial service except checking accounts. This article analyzes several aspects of the trade credit agreement. It starts by explaining why trade credit is such an extended phenomenon in spite of the existence of a specialized financial sector. Then it discusses several aspects that make trade credit a unique and not fully contractual arrangement, whose value depends to a great extent on the value of the commercial relationship between the supplier and the buyer. It then focuses on the value of trade credit for entrepreneurial firms.

We analyze the impact of monetary policy on the supply of bank credit. Monetary policy affects both loan supply and demand, thus making identification a steep challenge. We therefore analyze a novel, supervisory dataset with loan applications from Spain. Accounting for time-varying firm heterogeneity in loan demand, we find that tighter monetary and worse economic conditions substantially reduce loan granting, especially from banks with lower capital or liquidity ratios; responding to applications for the same loan, weak banks are less likely to grant the loan. Finally, firms cannot offset the resultant credit restriction by applying to other banks. (JEL E32, E44, E52, G21, G32)

Most of the literature on multiple banking assumes equal financing shares. However, unequal, asymmetric or concentrated bank borrowing is widespread, and creditor concentration is only weakly correlated with the number of bank relationships. This paper therefore investigates the determinants of creditor concentration for German firms using a comprehensive firm-bank level dataset for the time period between 1993 and 2003. We document that corporate borrowing from banks is very often concentrated, even for the largest firms in our sample. Leveraged firms and firms with more redeployable assets concentrate their borrowing from banks, as are firms dealing with a relationship lender that is profitable, that has lower monitoring costs, or that operates in a concentrated regional lending market.

Using a novel dataset that allows us to trace the bank relationships of a sample of mostly unlisted firms, we explore which borrowers are able to benefit from foreign bank presence in emerging markets. Our results suggest that the limits to financial integration are less tight than the static picture of firm-bank relationships implies. Even though foreign banks are more likely to engage large and foreign-owned firms, after an acquisition, a bank is 20% less likely to terminate a relationship with a firm if the acquirer is foreign rather than domestic. Most importantly, within a credit market, firms appear to have the same access to financial loans and ability to invest whether they borrow from a foreign bank or not, while foreign banks benefit all firms by indirectly enhancing credit access.

We study a representative dataset from Turkey that identifies firm–bank connections. Banks in Turkey differ not only in size and nationality, but also in ownership and orientation (non-Islamic versus Islamic)-resulting in at least six distinct bank types. We estimate a multinomial logit of the choice by the firm of bank type. We document a strong correspondence between bank type and firm characteristics that is not always the same as has been documented so far for US datasets. For example, small firms engage large rather than small banks. Young, large, multiple-bank, and industry-diversified firms, that are located in or close to Istanbul, team up with foreign banks. Islamic banks mainly deal with young, multiple-bank, industry-focused and transparent firms.

Loan rates for seemingly identical borrowers often exhibit substantial dispersion. This paper investigates the determinants of the dispersion in interest rates on loans granted by banks to small and medium sized enterprises. We associate this dispersion with the loan officers’ use of "discretion" in the loan rate setting process. We find that “discretion” is most important if: (i) loans are small and unsecured; (ii) firms are small and opaque; (iii) the firm operates in a large and highly concentrated banking market; and (iv) the firm is distantly located from the lender. Consistent with the proliferation of information-technologies in the banking industry, we find a decreasing role for "discretion" over time in the provision of small credits to opaque firms. While widely used in the pricing of loans, "discretion" plays only a minor role in the decisions to grant loans.

We examine the firm- and country-level determinants of foreign currency borrowing by small firms, using information on the most recent loan extended to 3101 firms in 25 transition countries between 2002 and 2005. Our results suggest that foreign currency borrowing is much stronger related to firm-level foreign currency revenues than it is to country-level interest rate differentials. Supporting the conclusion that carry-trade behavior is not the key driver of foreign currency borrowing in our sample we find no evidence that firm-level indicators of distress costs or financial transparency affect loan currency denomination. Overall, our findings suggest that retail clients which do take foreign currency loans are better equipped to bear the corresponding currency risks than is commonly thought. Policy makers should therefore take a closer look at the characteristics of borrowers before implementing regulations which are aimed at curbing foreign currency loans.

In this paper, we investigate how firms choose their banks. We focus on the role played by the decision factors, the decision maker and the decision process in determining firm–bank relationships. We have access to a unique survey that was run by a major bank in the Czech Republic. We find that firms that consider bank reputation to be an important decision factor, have fewer bank relationships and are less likely to reduce the number or quantity of services taken from their banks. Firms that emphasize the price of bank services are more likely to end relationships or to reduce services. Interestingly, the identity of the corporate decision maker determines the number of bank relationships. A Chief Financial Officer deciding on her own will opt for a lower number of banks than a committee of board members.

This paper investigates the effect of interbank market integration on small firm finance in the build-up to the 2007–2008 financial crisis. We use a comprehensive data set that contains contract terms on individual loans to 6047 firms across 14 European countries between 1998:01 and 2005:12. We account for the selection that arises in the loan request and approval process. Our findings imply that integration of interbank markets resulted in less stringent borrowing constraints and in substantially lower loan rates. The decrease was strongest in markets with competitive banking sectors. We also find that in the most rapidly integrating markets, firms became substantially overleveraged during the build-up to the crisis.

Based on survey data covering 8,387 firms in 20 countries we compare the access to bank credit for firms in Eastern Europe to that in selected Western European countries. Our analysis reveals five main results. First, the firm-level determinants of the propensity to apply are similar in Eastern and Western Europe: small and financially opaque firms as well as firms with alternative financing sources are less likely to apply for credit while firms with greater financing needs (exporters) are more likely to apply. The lower rate of loan applications by firms in Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe seems to be partly driven by the stronger presence of foreign banks and the lower level of credit information sharing. Second, while those firms which do apply for credit are rarely denied credit, foreign bank presence is associated with higher loan rejection rates among small firms. The high loan approval rates observed in Eastern and Western Europe result partly from a selection effect: those firms which are more likely to have an application rejected are less likely to apply in the first place. We find evidence that foreign bank presence is associated with higher loan rejection rates among small and government-owned firms. Third, the reasons why firms do not apply for loans differ strongly between the two regions. In Eastern Europe a higher fraction of non-applicants seem to be discouraged by lending conditions, that is, high interest rates and tough collateral requirements, while in Western Europe more firms simply do not need loans. Fourth, credit constraints in Eastern Europe softened in recent years. Firms which were discouraged from applying for credit or denied credit in 2005 were more likely to have a loan in 2008 than to still be credit constrained, especially in countries with better credit information sharing. Finally, credit constraints do affect firm performance in Eastern Europe. In particular, firms which are denied credit or discouraged from applying are less likely to invest in R&D and introduce new products.