Capital structure, asset redeployability, top-management compensation and credit risk measurements: The impact of the on and off-balance sheet financing

Abstract

With the existence of loopholes in the accounting rules, firms have been able to keep many assets and their corresponding debt off the balance sheets, thus, hiding the true value of debt and firm financial risk (Ketz (2003), Franzen et al. (2009) and Koller et al. (2010)). Graham and Leary (2011) point out that one of the noticeable gaps in the capital structure research area is the mis-measurement of leverage when off-balance sheet financing is excluded. Therefore, this thesis bridges the mis-measurement gap by adjusting leverage for three important off-balance sheet debt equivalents and two on-balance sheet ones. Moreover, this study investigates the relationships between asset redeployability, top-management compensation and both adjusted and non-adjusted leverage as well as examines whether these on and off-balance sheet debt equivalents are reflected in credit risk measurements. Focusing on large US firms from 1996 to 2010, my results show that the off-balance sheet debt equivalents account for significant amounts over total reported debt. Also, there is a considerable gap between reported debt and adjusted debt for debt equivalents, and this gap seems to increase sharply over time. I suggest that these debt equivalents should be considered carefully; otherwise, firms' financial health can be misinterpreted. In addition, I document different results for adjusted and non-adjusted leverage which indicates that existing theories related to the conventional capital structure might not be able to give the same explanations to the adjusted one. Moreover, credit risk measurements do not incorporate all of these debt equivalents in their credit risk assessments; which implies that the market may not be fully aware of the importance of these debt equivalents.

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ORCID for Taufiq Choudhry: orcid.org/0000-0002-0463-0662

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