A Tail of Two Crises: Financial Crises and Corporate Restructuring – Focusing on the Corporate Lifecycle

The purpose of this study is to obtain insights into corporate response to financial distress in Korea. South Korea experienced Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s and Global Financial Crisis in the late 2000s, and the economy fared better during the GFC than during the AFC. By exploiting the country’s unique experience, this study examines whether the corporate responses were different between the periods of AFC and GFC. Moreover, as prior studies suggest that financially distressed firms’ restructuring choices are affected by the corporate lifecycle, this study investigates whether the preference and effectiveness of distressed companies’ restructuring strategies are affected by the lifecycle stages and whether there were differences between the two crisis periods. This study finds that the associations shifted from the AFC period to the GFC period such that distressed firms were more likely to undertake asset strategies and financial strategies to issue new debt and equity during the GFC period relative to the AFC period, while the preference over the managerial strategy reduced as time goes by. Further, this study provides evidence suggesting the existence of corporate lifecycle effect on the distressed firms’ restructuring strategy choice and their effectiveness. The lifecycle effect on the financially distressed firms’ preference and lifecycle effect on the restructuring strategies’ effectiveness is different for each restructuring strategy and each period. The empirical results suggest that corporate response to financial distress may demonstrate an industrial learning effect in coping with circumstances.