Monitoring, Financial Distress, and the Structure of Commercial Lending Syndicates
研究商业贷款银团的规模和构成，发现当借款人信息少、信用风险高或贷款有抵押时，银团更小更集中，这有助于监控和重新谈判；同时，限制贷款转售会导致初始银团更大更分散。
We examine the size and composition of commercial lending syndicates. Syndicates are smaller and more concentrated when there is little information about the borrower, when credit risk is relatively high, and when a loan is secured. This suggests syndicates are structured to enhance monitoring efforts and to facilitate renegotiation if borrowers become financially distressed. Since loan sales can change a syndicate’s structure, lead banks often constrain such activity. Limiting resales results in larger, more diffuse syndicates at the loan origination stage, however. Syndicates also grow larger and more diffuse when arrangers are more reputable, when loans have longer terms to maturity, and when borrowers hold more growth options. Our results are robust in a sample restricted to borrowers with traded equity or with credit ratings. The findings for composition likewise are robust when we control for potential endogeneity bias and for the influence of syndicate size on composition.