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We explore the relation between the maturity of new debt issues and firms' choice between bank loans and public bonds. We use borrowing firms' asset maturity and effective tax rates to instrument for the debt maturity, and bank competition and bank liquidity in the borrowers' state to instrument for the debt choice. The analysis provides evidence of causality in both directions. Consistent with theories based on information asymmetry and agency costs, we find that firms which seek to increase the borrowing term by one standard deviation are 30% less likely to choose bank loans, while firms which prefer bank loans have 70 months shorter maturity on average. Our results remain significant, albeit with smaller economic magnitudes, when we use different samples, include firm fixed effects, or use heteroskedasticity based instruments as in Lewbel (J Bus Econ Stat 30(1):67–80, 2012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) as an exogenous shock to board structure, we identify internal monitoring via board independence and estimate its impact on corporate debt maturity. We introduce a triple difference-in-difference approach. Additionally, we use a simultaneous equations model and address that decisions about leverage and debt maturity are simultaneous. We also incorporate new debt issuance in the model to ensure the causality in the relation is from internal monitoring towards the maturity of new debt. The findings provide support for agency theory. As board independence increases, internal monitoring becomes stronger, and good governance substitutes for external control over managers through short-term debt. Subsequently, firms have more long-maturity debt. The results are robust to controlling for other internal monitoring mechanisms, CEO characteristics, financial constraints, cash, bond ratings, yield, and debt seniority. The impact of increased board independence on debt maturity is more significant for conglomerates and cases where there is a greater need for internal control over managers, such as CEO duality, high GIM index, straight debt, less strict covenants, high intangibility, high free cash flow, no majority blockholders, high discretionary accruals, or high real earnings management. In further analyses, we rule out the concern that our results are due to better reporting of internal controls through SOX Section 404 or an increase in auditors' liability after SOX, rather than increased board independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the joint choices of cash holdings and debt maturity for a large sample of firms for the 1985-2013 period. We find that there is a positive relation between debt maturity and cash holdings. Our results hold after taking into account endogeneity among leverage, debt maturity, and cash holding. We posit that this positive relationship will be found among firms facing financial constraints and we find support for this hypothesis. Our results are robust after we control for agency problems, international taxation, bank loan liquidity covenants and default risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of initial public offerings (IPOs) on the evolution of debt maturity by tracking a sample of US firms that went public over the period 1998-2011. Our findings reveal a significant and permanent increase in debt maturity post-IPO. The short-term debt ratio drops by nearly a fifth in the first 2 years after the IPO. These findings are economically significant and robust to controlling for the endogeneity in the listing decision. However, the lengthening of the post-IPO debt maturity is only evident in small, high-growth, and highly levered firms. This finding lends greater support to asymmetric information models than theories based on the agency costs of debt. There is some support for the argument based on the agency costs of equity as the IPO effect on debt maturity is only significant for firms with a high dilution ratio. Finally, the IPO effect varies with macroeconomic conditions as the increase in debt maturity post-IPO was most pronounced during the recent financial crisis of 2007-2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon the scarce evidence about the relationship between ownership structure and debt maturity using a sample of listed Spanish firms. Our results suggest that there is a non monotonic (concave) relationship between long term debt and managerial ownership. Long term debt and managerial ownership relate positively at low levels of managerial ownership and negatively at higher levels. Moreover, the results offer support for the presence of a non-monotonic relationship (concave) between debt maturity and the presence of a large shareholder. The relationship between these variables is positive when the ownership of the large investors is low, and it becomes negative for higher levels of ownership. In addition, our evidence shows that firms use more short term debt when the main shareholder is a bank. We also find that firms use more long term debt when they are smaller and more indebted. In addition, firms take decisions about debt maturity without considering tax effects, but seeking to avoid the term premium on the interest rates. Finally, the results confirm the non-monotonic relationship between long term debt and credit risk identified by Diamond (J Econ 106:709-737, ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]