We study to what extent firms spread out their debt maturity dates across time, which we call granularity of corporate debt. We consider the role of debt granularity using a simple model in which a firm's inability to roll over expiring debt causes inefficiencies, such as costly asset sales or...

We studied information and interaction processes in six lending relationships between a universal bank and medium sized firms. The study is based on the credit files of the respective firms. If no problems occur in these lending relationships, bank monitoring is based mainly on cheap,...

During the last years the lending business has come under considerable competitive pressure and bank managers often express concern regarding its profitability vis-a-vis other activities. This paper tries to empirically identify factors that are able to explain the financial performance of bank...

Some of the most widely expressed myths about the German financial system are concerned with the close ties and intensive interaction between banks and firms, often described as Hausbank relationships. Links between banks and firms include direct shareholdings, board representation, and proxy...

Some of the most widely expressed myths about the German financial system are concerned with the close ties and intensive interaction between banks and firms, often described as Hausbank relationships. Links between banks and firms include direct shareholdings, board representation, and proxy...

In recent years new methods and models have been developed to quantify credit risk on a portfolio basis. CreditMetrics (tm), CreditRisk+, CreditPortfolio (tm) are among the best known and many others are similar to them. At first glance they are quite different in their approaches and...

This paper analyzes loan pricing when there is multiple banking and borrower distress. Using a unique data set on SME lending collected from major German banks, we can instrument for effective coordination between lenders, carrying out a panel estimation. The analysis allows to distinguish...

All other terms being equal (e.g. seniority), syndicated loan contracts provide larger lending compensations (in percentage points) to institutions funding larger amounts. This paper explores empirically the motivation for such a price design on a sample of sovereign syndicated loans in the...

This paper uses a unique data set from credit files of six leading German banks to provide some empirical insights into their rating systems used to classify corporate borrowers. On the basis of the New Basle Capital Accord, which allows banks to use their internal rating systems to compute...

In the recent theoretical literature on lending risk, the coordination problem in multi-creditor relationships have been analyzed extensively. We address this topic empirically, relying on a unique panel data set that includes detailed credit-file information on distressed lending relationships...