This paper analyses the influence of the financial crisis on corporate debt maturity for 39 countries during the period 1995–2012. The results reveal the importance of the dependence of firms on external finance and the banking structure of the countries on debt maturity during the financial crisis. Corporate debt maturity was found to decline during the financial crisis. However, only those firms that were more dependent on external finance before the onset of the financial crisis suffered this reduction. The reduction in corporate debt maturity is the result of a higher average increase in short-term debt than in long-term debt. The financial crisis had a stronger negative effect on corporate debt maturity in countries with less bank concentration, while the debt maturity of larger firms decreased less as a result of the financial crisis than the debt maturity of smaller firms in countries where banks play an important role in the financing of the private sector.

Recent research finds that investors, broadly defined, react to the linguistic tone of quarterly earnings conference calls; there is a positive relation between firms' stock returns and call tone (a measure of “sentiment” related word tabulations). However, this type of soft information can be subtle, context-specific, and difficult to interpret. Moreover, the literature suggests cross-sectional variation in information processing skills among investors. Thus, we test whether sophisticated investors interpret earnings conference call tone differently than investors at large by examining short selling activity and its relation to earnings conference call tone. We find that short sellers target firms with simultaneous high earnings surprise and abnormally high management tone. The combination of positive earnings surprise and unusually positive tone strengthens short sellers' return predictability. This result indicates that short sellers interpret revealed “inflated” call language by managers more completely than naïve investors. The incomplete stock price reaction by naïve investors due to the lack of reliability that they place on this soft information results in overpricing of the stock. However, it also suggests that managers are unable to maintain prolonged overvaluation of their stock by striking an overly optimistic posture in the interactive conference call disclosure forum since short sellers' trades provide additional price discovery.

One of the primary goals of a firm going public is to create a greater visibility to investors in general. Using a sample of 809 IPOs from 2001–2010, we empirically examine and find that multiple lead underwriters (MLUs) have greater visibility through our five pre- and post-IPO visibility measures. This also holds after accounting for potential endogeneity. Also, MLU-IPOs do not have more underpricing. Our results suggest that issuers with MLUs can increase the firm’s familiarity to the investment community and expand their investor base, and this increased firm visibility is not a trade-off for a greater level of underpricing.