This paper examines the pricing of global syndicated loans during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that loan spreads rise by over 11 basis points in response to a one standard deviation increase in the lender's exposure to COVID-19 and over 5 basis points for an equivalent increase in the borrower's exposure. This implies excess interestof about USD 5.16 million and USD 2.37 million respectively for a loan of average size and duration. The aggravating effect of the pandemic is exacerbated with the level of government restrictions to tackle the virus's spread, with firms’ financial constraints and reliance on debt financing, whereas it is mitigated for relationship borrowers, borrowers listed in multiple exchanges or headquartered in countries that can attract institutional investors.

Lending to corporates in foreign currencies can expose banks to substantial currency risk. Using global syndicated loan data, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in exchange rate volatility increases loan spreads somewhere in the range between 5.5 and 16.1 basis points for loans made in a currency different from the lenders’. This implies excess interest of approximately 1 to 3 USD million for loans of average size and duration. We also show that this finding is mostly attributed to credit constraints and deviations from perfect competition in international lending markets, and that borrowers can lower the extra cost by forming strong lending relationships with their banks.

In this paper we quantify the differences between market and regulatory assessments of bank portfolio risk, and thereby demonstrate that larger differences significantly reduce corporate lending rates. Specifically, to entice borrowers, banks reduce spreads by approximately 4.3% following a one standard deviation increase in our measure for bank asset-risk differences. This is equivalent to an interest income loss of USD 2.03 million on a loan of average size and duration. The separate effects of market and regulatory risk are much less potent. Our study reveals a disciplinary-competition effect in favor of corporate borrowers when there is information asymmetry between investors and bank regulators.