Generational Socioemotional Wealth and Debt Maturity: Evidence from Private Family Firms of GIPSI Countries

In this paper we investigate the relationship between generational socioemotional wealth (SEW) and debt maturity structure in private family firms of GIPSI countries for the period 2010-2018. This appears to be quite an important issue to study, given that SEW is a peculiar aspect of family firms and its impact on the debt maturity structure, still relatively unexplored, is likely to change according to the generation running the family business. We show that the importance attached to SEW decreases when moving from the firms’ founder to the subsequent generations, with a negative effect on the amount of long-term debt. The forward-looking orientation of first-generation family firms favours long-term credit by banks in order to expand a healthy business which can be inherited by future generations. These businesses are hence perceived as less risky and more value-creating by external creditors, compared to later-generation family firms. Alternatively, SEW preservation is often less of a target in later-generation family firms, because some descendants consider the firm simply as a source of extra finance and conflicts of interest often arise between multiple generations or different family branches entering the business. Short-term debt may then be employed as a signaling effect of the quality of the firm. At the same time, borrowing long-term capital may become difficult if lenders question the creditworthiness of these businesses. This issue emerged dramatically during the sovereign debt crisis, when a significant contraction of credit to firms was observed throughout the GIPSI countries.

The impact of contract enforcement efficiency on debt maturity structure using mathematical derivation and comparative static analysis

In recent years, the systematic use of advanced mathematical methods to express, study and argue economic theories has become an important branch and research hotspot in economics. The choice of debt maturity structure is an interesting economics issue in corporate finance. The signing of debt financing contract is not only the enterprises’ independent behavior, but also will be affected by the contract environment. Differences in the contractual environment will inevitably lead to differences in the efficiency of contract enforcement between borrowers and lenders in debt contracts. This paper introduces the contract enforcement efficiency factor on the basis of the standard structure model constructed by Holmstrom and Tirole, and then theoretically investigates the influence mechanism of contract enforcement efficiency on debt maturity structure based on the mediating role of contract enforcement efficiency on the investors’ liquidation claims. By transforming the financing contract into a linear programming problem, and then solving the optimization model, mathematical derivation and static comparative analysis, the research shows that as the efficiency of contract enforcement increases, the amount of short-term debt and long-term debt increases, while the direction change in debt maturity structure is uncertain and the specific relationship between them is closely related to the magnitude of all exogenous variables.

Determinants of corporate debt maturity: Evidence from the consumer goods sector in Vietnam

Debt maturity structure plays an important role in enterprises’ capital structure policies, and debt maturity varies from industry to industry. The paper investigates the determinants that affect the debt maturity structure of listed firms in the consumer goods industry from 2009 to 2019. The data is collected from consumer goods companies listed on the Vietnam Stock Exchange. The feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) estimation is demonstrated to consider not only micro but also macroeconomic variables that have influenced the corporate debt maturity policy. The empirical results show that five microeconomic factors, such as capital structure, asset structure, asset liquidity, profitability, and firm size, have influenced the debt maturity and are statistically significant. Meanwhile, macroeconomic factors such as inflation rate and credit growth have significantly affected the corporate debt maturity. Finally, the paper provides some suggestions for financial managers on the optimal corporate debt maturity in the consumer goods sector and recommendations for policy-makers when implementing macroeconomic policies.

Analyzing the impact of board vigilance on financial distress through the intervention of leverage structure and interaction of asset tangibility in the non-financial sector of Pakistan

This study focuses on the relationship between board vigilance and financial distress in non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). The mediating role of leverage structure and moderating role of asset tangibility is also studied following Baron and Kenney’s approach. The study analyzed the data of 284 firms ranging from 2013 to 2017 by using ordinary least squares (OLS) and panel corrected standard errors (PCSE) regressions. The study revealed that the debt maturity structure mediates the relationship between board independence and financial distress and between CEO non-duality and financial distress but the capital structure did not mediate any of the stated relationships. Similarly, asset tangibility negatively moderated the relationship between debt maturity and financial distress. However, there was no such moderation detected between the relationship of capital structure and financial distress. The results remained consistent throughout the analysis with both regression techniques. These results suggest using more long-term debt in debt maturity structure to have control over financial distress and also to reduce the reliance on non-productive tangible assets in the asset structure of non-financial firms of Pakistan.