IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v35y2022i4p1897-1932..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Creditor Control of Corporate Acquisitions

Author

Listed:
  • David A Becher
  • Thomas P Griffin
  • Greg Nini

Abstract

We examine the impact of creditor control rights on corporate acquisitions. Nearly 75 of loan agreements include restrictions that limit borrower acquisition decisions throughout the life of the contract. Following a financial covenant violation, creditors use their bargaining power to tighten these restrictions and limit acquisition activity, particularly deals expected to earn negative announcement returns. Firms that do announce an acquisition after violating a financial covenant earn 1.8 higher stock returns, on average, and do not pursue less risky deals. We conclude that creditors use contractual rights and the renegotiation process to limit value-destroying acquisitions driven by managerial agency problems.

Suggested Citation

  • David A Becher & Thomas P Griffin & Greg Nini, 2022. "Creditor Control of Corporate Acquisitions," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(4), pages 1897-1932.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:35:y:2022:i:4:p:1897-1932.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhab075
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarfraz Hussain & Mohammad Enamul Hoque & Perengki Susanto & Waqas Ahmad Watto & Samina Haque & Pradeep Mishra, 2022. "The Quality of Fair Revaluation of Fixed Assets and Additional Calculations Aimed at Facilitating Prospective Investors’ Decisions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-14, August.
    2. Saiying Deng & Yutao Li, 2023. "Creditor control rights and borrower protection: the role of borrower consent clause in private debt contracts," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 357-394, July.
    3. Rainville, Megan & Unlu, Emre & Wu, Juan Julie, 2022. "How do stronger creditor rights impact corporate acquisition activity and quality?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    4. Nguyen, Hien T. & Phan, Hieu V. & Vo, Hong, 2023. "Agency problems and corporate social responsibility: Evidence from shareholder-creditor mergers," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    5. Akdoğu, Evrim & Paukowits, Aysun Alp & Celikyurt, Ugur, 2023. "Bondholder governance, takeover likelihood, and division of gains," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    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:oup:rfinst:v:35:y:2022:i:4:p:1897-1932.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.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.