Do Banks Price Independent Directors’ Attention?
研究发现，当独立董事将某公司董事会视为其最 prestigious 的职位时，该公司获得的银行贷款利率更低、期限更长、条款更宽松，表明银行会考虑独立董事的关注度。
Masulis and Mobbs (2014), (2015) find that independent directors with multiple directorships allocate their monitoring efforts unequally based on a directorship’s relative prestige. We investigate whether bank loan contract terms reflect such unequal allocation of directors’ monitoring effort. We find that bank loans of firms with a greater proportion of independent directors for whom the board is among their most prestigious have lower spreads, longer maturities, fewer covenants, lower syndicate concentration, lower likelihood of collateral requirement, lower annual loan fees, and higher bond ratings. Our evidence indicates that independent directors’ attention is associated with lower cost of borrowing.