Do Mergers Improve Information? Evidence from the Loan Market

Fabio Panetta, Fabiano Schivardi and Matthew Shum ()

No 4961, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We examine the informational effects of M&As by investigating whether bank mergers improve banks? ability to screen borrowers. By exploiting a dataset in which we observe a measure of a borrower?s default risk that the lenders observe only imperfectly, we find evidence of these informational improvements. Mergers lead to a closer correspondence between interest rates and individual default risk: after a merger, risky borrowers experience an increase in the interest rate, while non-risky borrowers enjoy lower interest rates. These informational benefits appear to derive from improvements in information processing resulting from the merger, rather than from explicit information sharing on individual customers among the merging parties. Our evidence suggests that part of these informational improvements stem from the consolidated banks using ?hard? information more intensively.

Keywords: Mergers; Banking; Asymmetric information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-fin, nep-fmk and nep-ind
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Do Mergers Improve Information? Evidence from the Loan Market (2009)
Journal Article: Do Mergers Improve Information? Evidence from the Loan Market (2009)
Working Paper: Do mergers improve information? Evidence from the loan market (2004)
Working Paper: Do mergers improve information? evidence from the loan market (2004)
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