Decoupling the distressed banks and their clients, and coupling the distressed firms and their lending banks

Abstract

This paper simultaneously investigates the responses of stock prices of the related banks and the client firms when one of them is in distress. Two effects are examined. The distressed bank effect, which claims that the stock price of client firms are coupled to that of their related distress banks, and the distressed firm effect, which claims that the related banks are negatively affected when their client firms are in distress. We collect the detailed information of individual transaction loan data to find the relationship between banks and their client firms. Asymmetric responses are reported in this paper. Our results reject the distressed bank effect but, by contrast, cannot reject the distressed firm effect. We propose the fund diversification hypothesis and the leverage hypothesis, and argue the decoupling effect of the distressed bank and their listed firms, owing to the diversified choice of clients` financing channel.