Mutual fund families increasingly hold bonds and stocks from the same firm. We present evidence that dual ownership allows firms to increase valuable investments and refinance by issuing bonds with lower yields and fewer restrictive covenants, especially when firms face financial distress. Dual holders also prevent overinvestment by firms with entrenched managers. Overall, our results suggest that mutual fund families internalize the agency conflicts of their portfolio companies, highlighting the positive governance externalities of intra-family cooperation.

We analyze how creditor rights affect the nonsynchronicity of global corporate credit default swap spreads (CDS-NS). CDS-NS is negatively related to the country-level creditor-control rights, especially to the “restrictions on reorganization” component, where creditor-shareholder conflicts are high. The effect is concentrated in firms with high investment intensity, asset growth, information opacity, and risk. Pro-creditor bankruptcy reforms led to a decline in CDS-NS, indicating lower firm-specific idiosyncratic information being priced in credit markets. A strategic-disclosure incentive among debtors avoiding creditor intervention seems more dominant than the disciplining effect, suggesting how strengthening creditor rights affects power rebalancing between creditors and shareholders.

We investigate how shareholder-debtholder conflict of interest affects the corporate tax avoidance using a unique setting of the affiliated and unaffiliated commercial bankers’ board representation. Consistent with the notion that board representation grants lenders’ access to private information that helps monitor and influence firms’ tax practice, we find that appointments of affiliated banker directors significantly reduce firms’ tax avoidance behavior, while appointing unaffiliated banker directors shows no such effect. The impact of affiliated banker directors on alleviating tax avoidance is stronger among firms with severer conflict of interest between shareholders and debtholders, specifically among firms with weaker corporate governance, higher financial leverage and higher CEO stock ownership.

Der „umgekehrte Drehtüreffekt“ beschreibt das Phänomen, wenn ehemalige Bankerinnen und Banker Vorstandspositionen in nationalen Aufsichtsbehörden (National Supervisory Agency, NSA) bekleiden. Ein neu erhobener Datensatz zeigt, dass etwa ein Drittel der Vorstandsmitglieder in europäischen NSA vorher in der Finanzindustrie tätig war. Die Bestellung ehemaliger Banker in NSA-Vorstände geht mit positiven Börsenreaktionen einher, was auf eine „Näheprämie“ in der Bewertung beaufsichtigter Banken hindeutet. Im Gegensatz dazu ruft die Berufung von Bürokraten ohne praktische Vorkenntnisse in der Bankenwelt negative Börsenreaktionen hervor. Bis zur Einführung des Einheitlichen Aufsichtsmechanismus (Single Supervisory Mechanism, SSM) in Europa korreliert die Präsenz ehemaliger Banker in NSA-Vorständen mit einer geringeren regulatorischen Kapitalquote, was auf einen nachsichtigeren Aufsichtsstil schließen lässt.

We exploit the staggered introduction of liability waivers when investors hold stakes in conflicting business opportunities as a shock to venture capital (VC) investment and director networks. After the law changes, we find increases in within-industry VC investment and common directors serving on startup boards. Despite the potential for rent extraction, same-industry startups inside VC portfolios benefit by raising more capital, failing less, and exiting more successfully. VC directors serving on other startup boards are the primary mechanism associated with positive outcomes, consistent with common VC investment facilitating informational exchanges in VC portfolios.

This paper documents the rise of “poison bonds”, which are corporate bonds that allow bondholders to demand immediate repayment in a change-of-control event. The share of poison bonds among new issues has grown substantially in recent years, from below 20% in the 90s to over 60% since mid-2000s. This increase is predominantly driven by investment-grade issues. We provide causal evidence that the pressure to eliminate poison pills has led firms to issue poison bonds as an alternative. Our analysis suggests that this practice entrenches incumbent managers and destroys shareholder value. Holding a portfolio of firms that remove poison pills but promptly issue poison bonds results in negative abnormal returns of −7.3% per year. Our findings have important implications for the agency theory of debt: (i) more debt may not discipline the management; and (ii) even without financial distress, managerial entrenchment can lead to agency conflicts between shareholders and creditors.

We assemble data about executives on the boards of national supervisory authorities (NSA) in European banking, which reveal that 40% have an employment history in the financial industry. Appointment patterns to NSA boards differ substantially across countries. Generally, the appointment of former finance professionals as prudential supervisors is inconsequential for banks‘ valuations, capitalization, and asset growth. The exception are positive, but short-lived valuation effects for those banks whose alumni are appointed as executives of directly responsible NSA boards. Circumstantial evidence suggests that a “proximity bias“ is a more likely driver of this effect instead of superior financial expertise or intrinsic skills of the designated NSA executives.