The Determinants of Secured Syndicated Loans

We empirically explore the effects of credit risk, moral hazard, and lender relationship on the use of syndicated loan collateral pledged by borrowers. Consistent with previous empirical research, we find that lenders are more likely to require collateral for syndicated loans granted to Korean borrowers with higher credit risk, as reflected in the leverage ratio, Altman’s z-score, and maturity. In the presence of borrower’s hold-up problems, borrowers are less likely to pledge collateral. This suggests that Korean borrowers do not prefer to offer collateral as a means of mitigating potential hold-up problems in an agency setting. We also find that the borrower-lender relationship is the primary determinant of the use of collateral. The size of borrower assets and sales, however, are not determining factors in loan collateralization. Finally, the terms of loan characteristics, such as loan size and loan type, affect the likelihood of collateral. These results are robust after we control for the asset tangibility. The main limitation of this study, however, is the fact that our sample mainly covers the period of 1990’s, suggesting that there are other determinants of structure yet to be identified. In fact, there is a good possibility that the recent global credit crisis could have significantly influenced the structure of syndicated loan market in Korea. We leave it for future research.