Sky Blog
Insiders such as executives, directors, and large shareholders often use company stock as collateral for personal loans. This practice is widespread but lightly regulated, and to many it has long seemed a harmless perk of wealth and a private decision …
Share pledging—a financial strategy where corporate executives use their stock holdings as collateral for personal loans—has long been controversial. While it allows executives to obtain liquidity without selling shares, it also introduces risks, such as margin calls that can trigger …
Among those who study corporate financial distress and reorganization, the notion that senior lenders are in control is deeply ingrained. Celebrated papers in the law and corporate finance literatures attribute lender influence during periods of distress to blue-sky contracting practices.…
Debt has been a ubiquitous form of finance for millennia, and one might reasonably assume that we have a good handle on exactly what it is by now. It turns out that may not be the case.
A loan is …
Soon after the coronavirus pandemic erupted in the spring, Congress enacted the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act, pumping $2.2 trillion into the economy. Now, nine months later, many of that law’s critical elements have ended or will …
Since the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 has prompted a surge in economic uncertainty, causing interruptions in business supply chains and revenues that now threaten the survival of companies. Companies struggling to meet their fixed expenses and existing obligations respond by …
The Small Business Administration (“SBA”), in consultation with the Treasury Department, issued FAQ #43 on May 5, 2020 extending by a week the time within which a borrower has to repay a previously issued SBA loan under the …
Many managers receive company stock as compensation and then pledge that stock as collateral for personal loans. The practice is increasingly common, and its potential economic impact is anything but negligible. For example, Larcker and Tayan (2010) document that pledged …
Contract formation in commercial transactions can be an expensive and intricate process involving multiple stages and players, as well as significant investments in expertise and information. In complex asset purchases, leases, corporate acquisitions, or venture financing transactions, to name just …
In a new paper, we investigate how initial public offerings affect peer-to-peer lending platforms and, more specifically, whether the platforms tend to alter their operational decisions in anticipation of going public.
Peer-to-peer lenders are essentially online services that match anonymous …
Commercial real estate (CRE) lending is a risky activity that still dominates the business model of many modestly capitalized small and medium-sized banks. Bank supervisory and regulatory reforms recently enacted have reflected some of the lessons from the Great Financial …
On April 3, 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a report detailing a number of recommendations for reforming and modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (“CRA”) framework. The report, which follows through on the commitment made by Treasury in …
The credit bull market charged through 2017, with many terrific outcomes for opportunistic borrowers. But even in the best of times, borrowers and their advisors should remain nimble and thoughtful, and 2018 brings much to consider, including the impact on …
On July 27 of this year, Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), delivered a speech in which he questioned the sustainability of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) in its current form. The FCA has …
The syndicated loan market is one of the largest sources of financing for U.S. firms. This market has experienced tremendous growth over the past 20 years. In fact, some recent estimates suggest that U.S. firms obtain over $1 trillion in …
Many contemporary discussions of finance or of subjects that implicate finance – for example, federal budgetary or finance-regulatory policy – seem to be systematically colored by a seldom-examined presumption. We call this presumption the “intermediated scarce private capital myth.”
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European Economic Area (EEA) financial institutions are now subject to a new set of regulatory requirements designed to avoid taxpayers bailing out banks in the event of another banking crisis — a central component of which is that EU member …