The Journal of Finance

Market Interest Rates and Commercial Bank Profitability: An Empirical Investigation

Published: 12/01/1981   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1981.tb01078.x

MARK J. FLANNERY

The widespread notion that commercial banks “borrow short and lend long” implies that sharp market interest rate increases may induce a significant number of banking failures. This paper develops a method for estimating average asset and liability maturities for a sample of large money center banks. Regression models are tested to determine if market rate fluctuations have a significant impact on bank profitability. The conclusion is negative: large banks have effectively hedged themselves against market rate risk by assembling asset and liability portfolios with similar average maturities.

Asymmetric Information and Risky Debt Maturity Choice

Published: 03/01/1986   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1986.tb04489.x

MARK J. FLANNERY

When capital market investors and firm insiders possess the same information about a company's prospects, its liabilities will be priced in a way that makes the firm indifferent to the composition of its financial liabilities (at least under certain, well‐known circumstances). However, if firm insiders are systematically better informed than outside investors, they will choose to issue those types of securities that the market appears to overvalue most. Knowing this, rational investors will try to infer the insiders' information from the firm's financial structure. This paper evaluates the extent to which a firm's choice of risky debt maturity can signal insiders' information about firm quality. If financial market transactions are costless, a firm's financial structure cannot provide a valid signal. With positive transaction costs, however, high‐quality firms can sometimes effectively signal their true quality to the market. The existence of a signalling equilibrium is shown to depend on the (exogenous) distribution of firms' quality and the magnitude of underwriting costs for corporate debt.

DISCUSSION

Published: 05/01/1981   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1981.tb00475.x

MARK J. FLANNERY

Evidence of Bank Market Discipline in Subordinated Debenture Yields: 1983–1991

Published: 09/01/1996   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1996.tb04072.x

MARK J. FLANNERY, SORIN M. SORESCU

We examine debenture yields over the period 1983–1991 to evaluate the market's sensitivity to bank‐specific risks, and conclude that investors have rationally reflected changes in the government's policy toward absorbing private losses in the event of a bank failure. Although this evidence does not establish that market discipline can effectively control banking firms, it soundly rejects the hypothesis that investors cannot rationally differentiate among the risks undertaken by the major U.S. banking firms.

The Effect of Interest Rate Changes on the Common Stock Returns of Financial Institutions

Published: 09/01/1984   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1984.tb03898.x

MARK J. FLANNERY, CHRISTOPHER M. JAMES

This paper examines the relation between the interest rate sensitivity of common stock returns and the maturity composition of the firm's nominal contracts. Using a sample of actively traded commerical banks and stock savings and loan associations, common stock returns are found to be correlated with interest rate changes. The co‐movement of stock returns and interest rate changes is positively related to the size of the maturity difference between the firm's nominal assets and liabilities.

From T‐Bills to Common Stocks: Investigating the Generality of Intra‐Week Return Seasonality

Published: 06/01/1988   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1988.tb03948.x

MARK J. FLANNERY, ARIS A. PROTOPAPADAKIS

The authors investigate the extent to which intra‐week seasonality still exists and whether its pattern is uniform across three stock indices and Treasury bonds with seven different maturities. They find that intra‐week seasonality continues to be significant and that its pattern is not uniform, either between the stock indices and the Treasury bonds or even among the bonds alone. A pattern shared by stocks and bonds is that Monday returns become increasingly negative with maturity. These findings suggest that neither institutional nor general‐equilibriumex planations by themselves can explain the pattern of intra‐week seasonality in securities markets.

The Effect of Lender Identity on a Borrowing Firm's Equity Return

Published: 06/01/1995   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1995.tb04801.x

MATTHEW T. BILLETT, MARK J. FLANNERY, JON A. GARFINKEL

Previous research demonstrates that a firm's common stock price tends to fall when it issues new public securities. By contrast, commercial bank loans elicit significantly positive borrower returns. This article investigates whether the lender's identity influences the market's reaction to a loan announcement. Although we find no significant difference between the market's response to bank and nonbank loans, we do find that lenders with a higher credit rating are associated with larger abnormal borrower returns. This evidence complements earlier findings that an auditor's or investment banker's perceived “quality” signals valuable information about firm value to uninformed market investors.