Evidence suggests that asset pledgeability, debt complexity, and control rights of dispersed debt influence financial distress resolution. We model how courts’ imperfect verifiability of assets and valuable control of misaligned creditors shape firms’ debt structure and create coordination problems that determine distress outcomes and financing. A key result is that an increase in verifiability allows financially constrained firms to fund projects by pledging more assets to misaligned creditors, making contract renegotiation in distress times more difficult and increasing the probability of bankruptcy. Since equity receives less in the event of distress, constrained firms choose riskier projects with higher returns. Consistent with our model, bankruptcy filings increase after the U.S. Supreme Court decision imposing a “market test” to assess the value of stockholders’ interest in debtor proposals. The effect is stronger for firms with low asset verifiability. These firms also experienced an increase in recovery rates, debt capacity, and risk-taking. Our findings suggest that reforms improving the verifiability of assets substantially impact credit access. However, our results also point out that improving asset verifiability may be insufficient for constrained firms with aligned creditors. Therefore, complementary reforms that facilitate firms’ access to creditors from different market segments may be necessary.

Abstract We study how renegotiation frictions impact distressed debt resolution and ex-ante financial contracting. We do so by exploiting an event that exogenously reduced the costs that syndicated lenders incur when renegotiating debt out of court, without affecting in-court restructuring costs (IRS Regulation TD9599). CDS contracts insure creditors against in-court bankruptcy losses and CDS spreads reflect the shadow price of bankruptcy risk. Using a triple-differences approach, we show that CDS spreads fell by record figures on the event’s announcement, with declines concentrated among distressed firms that relied most on syndicated loans. Distressed firms’ loan renegotiation rates more than doubled, as banks agreed to extend loan maturities in exchange for higher interest payments. Those firms’ access to new syndicated loans increased while associated interest markups declined.

We model and analyze the interplay of capital structure and labor union reversible bargaining tools (such as union-sponsored shareholder proposals). Unions counter firms’ ex-post strategic use of debt by employing bargaining tools that can be reversed depending on firm performance. Firms adjust debt ex ante to make underinvestment a credible threat if the bargaining tools are not reversed. The use of reversible bargaining tools is negatively affected by debt, decreases for riskier firms when the state of the economy is low, and reduces the profits of safer firms. Consistently, we find that union-sponsored shareholder proposals are negatively related to leverage, decrease for riskier firms during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and are negatively associated with the profitability of safer firms.