Investor familiarity and corporate debt financing conditions

This study contributes to our understanding of how retail bondholders value familiarity with the issuer. Using a sample of corporate bonds issued by German non-financials and especially marketed to individual investors, we document that – besides product market visibility – three previously unconsidered antecedents of investor familiarity, i.e. local visibility, media visibility and overall recognition of the bond-issuing company, are negatively associated with credit spreads. Given that company visibility does not necessarily result in a reduction of fundamental risk for the group of bondholders, the finding that higher familiarity relates to lower risk premia suggests heuristic decision behaviour among retail investors where a familiarity bias reduces the perceived risk of bond investments.