If creditors selectively trade CDS linked to their borrowers, CDS positions can change the creditor-borrower relationship and play an important role in determining the borrower credit risk that determines CDS payoffs. On the one hand, CDS allow creditors to hedge their credit risk; therefore they may increase the supply of credit to the underlying firm. Such improved access to capital may increase borrowers' financial flexibility and resilience to financial distress.On the other hand, lenders may not be as vigilant in monitoring the borrowers once their credit exposures are hedged. Consequently, firms, in turn, may take on more risky projects. Furthermore, CDS-protected creditors are likely tougher during debt renegotiations, once the borrowers are in financial distress, by refusing debt workouts and making borrowers more vulnerable to bankruptcy….
El resultado es que
the likelihood of a rating downgrade and the likelihood of bankruptcy of the reference firms both increase after CDS start trading
En cuanto a los incentivos de los acreedores que han comprado protección frente a la insolvencia de sus deudores a través de CDS en la refinanciación de las deudas de éstos,
Anecdotal evidence suggests that CDS positions can play an important role in the process of distress resolution. To cite one such instance, CIT Group attempted to work out its debt from late 2008 to mid- 2009. In the event, however, some creditors with CDS protection rejected the firm's exchange offer. CIT Group eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 1, 2009. Hu and Black (2008) term such CDS-protected debt-holders “empty creditors”, meaning that they have all the same legal rights as creditors, but do not have positive risk exposure to borrower default; hence, their financial interests are not aligned with those of other creditors who do not enjoy such protection. The empty creditor problem is formally modeled by Bolton and Oehmke (2011).8 Their model predicts that, under mild assumptions, lenders will choose to become empty creditors by buying CDS protection. Consequently, they will be tougher in debt renegotiation when the firm is under stress. Empty creditors are even willing to push the firm into bankruptcy if their total payoffs including CDS payments would be larger in that event. In their model, CDS sellers anticipate this empty creditor problem and price it into the CDS premium, but they cannot directly intervene in the debt renegotiation process (unless they buy bonds or loans so as to become creditors).
Our combined dataset contains contract terms that allow us to test a unique prediction of the empty creditor model. Specifically, we know for each CDS contract whether restructuring is covered as a credit event or not. Buyers of “no restructuring” CDS contracts will be paid only if the reference firm files for bankruptcy or there is a failure to pay. However, buyers of other types of CDS contracts that include restructuring as a credit event will be compensated even when the debt of the reference firm is restructured. Clearly, creditors with “no restructuring” CDS protection will have a stronger incentive to force bankruptcy than buyers of other CDS contracts without this restrictive clause. Indeed, we find that the effects of CDS trading are stronger when a larger fraction of the CDS contracts contain the “no restructuring” credit event clause
Subrahmanyam, Marti G., Tang, Dragon Yongjun and Wang, Sarah Qian, Does the Tail Wag the Dog? The Effect of Credit Default Swaps on Credit Risk (December 21, 2012). HKIMR Working Paper No.29/2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2192351 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2192351
Se me ocurren dos cosas. La primera es que, tal como sugieren Black y Hu, los acreedores que se han asegurado frente a la insolvencia de sus deudores pueden tener incentivos “perversos” semejantes a los que tiene el que ha hecho un préstamo usurario (que prefiere que el deudor no cumpla para así, hacerse con la garantía que tiene un valor para él mucho mayor que el crédito). No es extraño que sean Black y Hu los que hayan acuñado la expresión “empty creditor” ya que ellos fueron los que primero analizaron el “empty voting”, esto es, la adquisición – mediante préstamo de acciones – del derecho de voto por terceros no socios para lograr que la sociedad adopte un acuerdo que puede perjudicar a la propia sociedad pero beneficiar a un tercero en cuyo bienestar tiene un interés el “empty voter”.
La segunda es que los CDS no pueden considerarse contratos de seguro cuando son instrumentos puramente especulativos, como en el caso del seguro sobre la vida del Papa, porque el que adquiere el seguro no tiene interés alguno en que el deudor frente a cuya insolvencia se asegura, no entre en quiebra.
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