
This paper examines the information content of the announcement of a sale of a borrower's loans by its lending bank. A large body of research has documented the positive impact on a firm's stock price around the announcement of initiating or renewing a lending relationship. In light of these findings it would seem natural that when a bank chooses to sell off the loans of a particular borrower, that the stock returns of the borrower would be adversely affected; particularly for sales of sub-par loans where the bank's information advantage is likely to be highest. Our paper is the first to test this hypothesis. We find that the stock returns of borrowers are significantly negatively impacted in the period surrounding the announcement of a loan sale. The post-loan sale period is also marked by a large incidence of bankruptcy filings by those borrowers whose loans are sold. Overall, the evidence supports the hypothesis that the news of a bank loan sale has a negative certification impact, which is validated by the subsequent performance of the firms whose loans are sold. We conduct similar event study tests for those banks that engage in loan sales and find that the stock returns of the selling banks are not significantly impacted on average.
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 104 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Top 1% | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% |
