Institutional differences between countries result in additional information risks between borrowers and lenders in cross‐border private loans. This study examines the effect of these information risks on the structure of optimal debt contracts in international (cross‐border) versus domestic private debt markets. Using mandatory IFRS adoption as an indicator for institutional changes that reduced differences between countries, I compare attributes of international versus domestic loans before and after IFRS adoption. I find that, in the pre‐IFRS period, international loans are associated with a higher credit spread, a weaker relationship between the bank and the borrower, a more diffuse loan syndicate, and less reliance on accounting‐based covenants than domestic loans. These results are consistent with incremental information risks in international debt markets that make it more costly for lenders to screen and monitor borrower credit quality, resulting in a more arm's‐length relationship between borrowers and lenders. Many of these associations attenuate after IFRS adoption, suggesting that the pre‐IFRS differences in contract terms are driven by incremental information risks related to institutional differences between countries. My findings imply that incremental information risks result in a different optimal contract in international debt contracts compared to domestic debt contracts.

IPOs and direct listings (DLs) offer two different mechanisms for firms to go public. In contrast to IPOs, DLs do not employ an underwriter or raise new capital. Using a sample of IPOs and DLs on major stock markets in the European Union, we document that firms that choose to go public via DLs are larger, more profitable, and less levered, on average, than IPO firms. These pre‐listing differences suggest that DL firms should be less risky than IPO firms; however, controlling for this selection effect, we find that DLs have higher aftermarket price volatility than IPOs. This is consistent with some policy‐makers' concerns that, because they lack an underwriter, DLs expose investors to higher risk than IPOs in the immediate post‐listing period. We show that this heightened price volatility persists, on average, for the first 20 trading days after listings, and is larger in industries where listed peer firms provide relatively low‐quality disclosures. Our results provide new evidence regarding the types of firms that choose to list via DLs versus IPOs and the riskiness of IPOs versus DLs in the immediate post‐listing period; additionally, our results are consistent with underwriters improving the quality of information available to investors for IPO firms in the pre‐listing period.

Prior literature documents that multiple directorships are negatively associated with operating performance due to overly busy directors; however, multiple directorships may also increase firm value because directors gain access to valuable connections, resources, and information through their multiple appointments. This paper examines M&A that terminate target firms' entire boards as a negative shock to both board busyness and connections at other firms, as a complement to Hauser (2018). We document that firms experiencing a decrease in multiple directorships due to M&A exhibit improved operating performance, monitoring, and strategic advising, on average. Firms with the smallest decrease in board connections experience the greatest improvement in operating performance and advising, while firms with the greatest decrease in board connections experience null or negative effects on operating performance and advising. Our findings provide new evidence of the costs and benefits of multiple directorships based on board busyness and connections.

This study documents that M&A delistings are associated with a deterioration in the quality of analysts’ information environment for industry peer firms, measured by an increase in analysts’ absolute forecast errors and dispersion. This effect persists for six quarters and is larger when the delisting target firm contributes relatively more to the industry information environment. Further, we find that, among analysts forecasting earnings for an industry peer firm, those who also followed the delisted target firm in the pre-M&A period experience a larger increase in their absolute forecast errors. A comparison based on public versus private target firms also suggests that the loss of target firms’ public disclosures plays a role in the deterioration in the quality of analysts’ information environment. In additional analyses, we find evidence consistent with this effect resulting from a deterioration in analysts’ ability to exploit across-firm information complementarities.

This study explores whether an increase in the size of firms’ reporting networks (the number of industry peer firms reporting in comparable standards) improves the quality of analysts’ information environments. We exploit the effect of the 2005 mandatory adoption of IFRS around the world on U.S. firms, as IFRS adoption did not directly affect U.S. firms but increased the size of their reporting networks. We document that mandatory IFRS adoption is associated with a significantly larger improvement in the quality of analysts’ information environment for U.S. firms with relatively few domestic industry peers than for other U.S. firms. Further, we show that there is a larger increase in the frequency with which analysts’ research reports for U.S. firms with few domestic peers mention IFRS-adopting EU industry peer firms. Our results provide evidence that mandatory reporting regulations that increase reporting comparability can result in positive information externalities from information network effects.