Institutional dual holdings and expected crash risk: Evidence from mergers between lenders and equity holders
利用贷款人与股东合并作为外生冲击，研究发现股东-债权人冲突减少后，双重持股者促进信息披露，降低企业预期股价崩盘风险，对投资者和监管者具有参考价值。
Abstract Exploiting mergers between lenders and shareholders of the same firm as an exogenous shock to shareholder–creditor conflicts, we examine the causal effect of these conflicts on firms' ex ante expected stock price crash risk evident in the options implied volatility smirk. The decrease in conflicts of interest between lenders and shareholders induces dual holders to encourage the disclosure of more information to alleviate costly information asymmetry with other investors and better execute their oversight role in constraining managers' bad news suppression. Consistent with expectations, we find that a firm's ex ante expected crash risk declines after a shareholder–creditor merger. We also report strong, robust evidence that the negative impact of mergers on firms' expected crash risk increases when institutional investors or lenders have a greater stake in the treatment firms or when shareholder–creditor conflicts are apt to be exacerbated. Additionally, we document that firms issue management earnings forecasts (especially bad news forecasts) more frequently after these mergers. Finally, we find that expected crash risk decreases more after mergers in firms suffering worse information asymmetry and with weak monitoring mechanisms. Our evidence suggests that option market participants value the dual holder's role in deterring managers' bad news hoarding.