Topic: Nonbank Lending

Speaker: Robert Prilmeier, Assistant Professor, Tulane University

Date: April 18 (Wednesday)

Time: 10:00-11:30am

Location: Building 4, Room 101

Language: English

Abstract:

We provide novel systematic evidence on the terms of direct lending by nonbank financial institutions. Analyzing hand-collected data for a random sample of publicly traded middle-market firms during the 2010-2015 period, we find that nonbank lending is widespread, with 30% of all loans being extended by nonbanks. Firms are more likely to borrow from a nonbank lender if local banks are poorly capitalized and less concentrated. Nonbank borrowers are smaller, more R&D intensive, and significantly more likely to have negative EBITDA. Nonbank lenders are less likely to monitor by including financial covenants in their loans, but appear to engage in more ex-ante screening: origination of nonbank loans is associated with larger positive announcement returns. We find that nonbank borrowers pay about 200 basis points higher interest rates than bank borrowers. Using fuzzy regression discontinuity design and matching techniques generates similar results. Overall, our results provide evidence of market segmentation in the commercial loan market, where bank and nonbank lenders utilize different lending technologies and cater to different types of borrowers.

 

About the speaker:

Robert Prilmeier is an Assistant Professor in Finance at Tulane University and has been a member of the faculty since 2012. He received his Ph.D. in Finance from The Ohio State University. His research interests lie in debt financing and financial intermediation, with a focus on empirical studies in debt contracting, financial crises, and bank performance. His work has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies.