Bank Equity Stakes in Borrowing Firms and Financial Distress
WP 96-1
Posted: 10 Sep 1996
There are 2 versions of this paper
Bank Equity Stakes in Borrowing Firms and Financial Distress
Bank Equity Stakes in Borrowing Firms and Financial Distress
Date Written: Undated
Abstract
We derive the optimal financial claim for a bank when the borrowing firm's uninformed stakeholders depend on the bank to establish whether the firm is distressed and whether concessions by stakeholders are necessary. The bank's financial claim is designed to ensure that it cannot collude with a healthy firm's owners to seek unnecessary concessions or to collude with a distressed firm's owners to claim that the firm is healthy. To prove that a request for concessions has not come from a healthy firm/bank coalition, the bank must hold either a very small or a very large equity stake when the firm enters distress. To prove that a distressed firm and the bank have not colluded to claim that the firm is healthy, the bank may need to hold equity under routine financial conditions. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System.
JEL Classification: G28, G32, G33, D82
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation