Structural changes in covenants through the adoption of IFRS in Brazil
研究了巴西采用国际财务报告准则（IFRS）前后，公司债券契约条款的结构变化，发现限制性担保和非会计类条款显著增加，而会计倍数条款未增长，对学者、监管者和从业者有参考价值。
This study examines changes in the structure of covenants in debt agreements of companies issuing debentures during the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Brazil. We investigate debt contracts of public and private companies that issued debentures before and after IFRS adoption in Brazil, between the years 2006–2008 and 2011–2014. We develop a database with all covenants from 126 contracts via hand-collected data, with 78 contracts from before IFRS adoption and 48 contracts afterward. We find high increases in covenants after adoption. However, this growth is observed only for restrictive security and non-accounting covenants, excluding clauses with accounting multiples. Our results show that IFRS adoption in Brazil shifted incentives and, as a result, shaped a new structure of debt contracts. Our findings complement and expand previous studies and can be useful to academics, regulators and practitioners by showing that the incentives to use accounting figures and ratios shifted in the credit market after IFRS adoption.