This study investigates whether banks respond to financial misreporting as the borrowing firms release misstated financial reports, i.e., in the misreporting period. Drawing upon finance theory that recognizes banks' superior information access and processing abilities, this study predicts and finds that banks adjust loan contract terms in response to the ongoing misreporting. Compared with loans issued in the prior period, loans issued in the misreporting period have higher interest spread, are more likely to be secured by collateral, and have more restrictive covenants. Further analyses show that banks acquire indirect, rather than direct, information about the misreporting and that they do not fully adjust loan pricing until after the restatement announcement. Together, these findings suggest that banks make timely, but insufficient, adjustments during the misreporting period. Nevertheless, banks' early reactions appear to be unique, as equity investors do not respond to the ongoing misreporting, but react to the loan information when it becomes public.
JEL Classifications: D82; G21; M41.
SYNOPSIS
We examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and conditional accounting conservatism. Drawing upon the stakeholder-engaging and information-enhancing perspectives of CSR activities, we hypothesize that the demand for conditional conservatism, which primarily arises from various contracting parties' concern about managerial opportunism and/or information asymmetry, is lower for better-performing CSR firms. Using the CSR ratings from the KLD database, we find, as predicted, a negative relation between CSR performance and conditional conservatism. These findings are robust to using a difference-in-differences research design and alternative measures of conditional conservatism. Further, cross-sectional analyses reveal that the negative association is more pronounced for firms with greater information asymmetry and stronger corporate governance. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of how a firm's CSR engagement may relate to an important attribute of financial reporting.
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