NBER Working Papers by Bernadette Minton

The past decade has seen significant changes in the structure of the corporate lending market, with non-commercial bank institutional investors playing larger roles than they historically have played. In addition, non-commercial bank institutional lenders are often equity holders in their borrowing firms. In our sample of 11,137 tranches of institutional “leveraged” loans, 2,008 (18%) have a non-commercial bank institution that also owns at least 0.1% of the firm’s equity. Such “dual holder” loan tranches have higher spreads than otherwise similar loan tranches without equity holder participation. The dual holder premium is present for both revolver and term loans, and exists within all non-investment grade credit rating classes. Contrary to risk-based explanations of this finding, dual ho...

We study CEO turnover – both internal (board driven) and external (through takeover and bankruptcy) – from 1992 to 2005 for a sample of large U.S. companies. Annual CEO turnover is higher than that estimated in previous studies over earlier periods. Turnover is 14.9% from 1992 to 2005, implying an average tenure as CEO of less than seven years. In the more recent period since 1998, total CEO turnover increases to 16.5%, implying an average tenure of just over six years. Internal turnover is significantly related to three components of firm performance – performance relative to industry, industry performance relative to the overall market, and the performance of the overall stock market. Also in the more recent period since 1998, the relation of internal turnover to performance is more...

This paper examines the use of credit derivatives by US bank holding companies from 1999 to 2003 with assets in excess of one billion dollars. Using the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Bank Holding Company Database, we find that in 2003 only 19 large banks out of 345 use credit derivatives. Though few banks use credit derivatives, the assets of these banks represent on average two thirds of the assets of bank holding companies with assets in excess of $1 billion. Few banks are net buyers of credit protection and disclose using credit derivatives to hedge loans. Banks are more likely to be net protection buyers if they engage in asset securitization, originate foreign loans, and have lower capital ratios. The likelihood of a bank being a net protection buyer is positively related to the per...

This paper estimates the determinants of appointments of 'outsiders' -- directors previously employed by banks or other non-financial firms -- to the boards of large (non-financial) Japanese companies. Appointments of both types of 'outsiders' increase with poor stock performance; those of bank outsiders also increase with negative current income. Appointments of bank outsiders are related to firm debt levels; those of corporate outsiders, to shareholder concentration and group affiliation, Both types of outsider appointments appear to be disciplinary -- top executive turnover increase substantially in the same year. Additional evidence on subsequent firm performance suggests that "bank" directors are appointed in financially distressed or contracting firms, while "corporate" directors are...