The introduction of the SME Supporting Factor (SF) allows banks to reduce capital requirements for credit risk on exposures to SME. This means that banks can free up capital resources that can be redeployed in the form of new loans. Our study documents that the SF alleviates credit rationing for medium-sized firms that are eligible for the application of the SF but not for micro/small firms. These results suggest that European banks were aware of this policy measure and optimized both their regulatory capital and their credit exposures by granting loans to the medium-sized firms, which are safer than micro/small firms.

Between 2009 and 2011, the Spanish banking system underwent a restructuring process based on savings banks’ consolidation. The program’s design allows us to study how banks’ consolidation affects credit supply and performance. We propose a quasi-experimental analysis showing that bank mergers restrict credit supply and set higher interest rates but also reject fewer applicants and report fewer nonperforming loans. We then estimate a structural model of credit in which banks set interest rates and lending standards. We find that, despite the relaxation in their lending standards, merged banks’ credit performance improved thanks to a significant drop in their screening costs.

This paper measures fragmentation in the European interbank market. We document that, during the recent crisis, fragmentation in the interbank market has been, on average, higher in the peripheral countries than in the core ones and it has increased particularly during periods of financial stress. Among the most significant factors that contributed to the high fragmentation levels observed are global factors such as financing costs and counterparty risk; and country-specific factors such as the debt-to-GDP ratio, the economic sentiment, and the banking sector openness. We also study the short-run effect of the ECB programmes and announcements and find a significant decrease in the daily levels of fragmentation immediately after the implementation of the SMP and the 3-year LTRO ECB programmes, the expansion of the list of the assets eligible as collateral in Eurosystem, the announcement of the Banking Union, and ECB President Mario Draghi's speech.

We analyze how the ECB’s purchases of corporate bonds under its Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP) affected the financing of Spanish firms. We first document that the announcement of the CSPP in March 2016 raised firms’ propensity to issue bonds. The flipside was a drop in the demand for bank loans by bond issuers. Around 75% of the drop in loans previously made to debt issuers was redirected to other, smaller nonbond issuing firms. This reallocation process was led by banks with weaker liquidity positions experiencing credit outflows, which extended credit to the same firms they were rationing prior to the CSPP. This positive credit supply shock raised the real investment of nonissuing firms. The concomitant ECB’s Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO-II) is estimated to have contributed to amplifying the credit-reallocation effect triggered by the CSPP.

This papers develops a taxonomy of financially distressed and zombie firms using a rich dataset that combines detailed firm-level and bank-firm level information in Spain. A distressed firm exhibits both cash-flow and balance-sheet insolvency whereas a zombie firm is a distressed company that has received new credit. We carry out several analyses to test the validity of these definitions. For instance, we document that being distressed is negatively correlated with the probability of receiving new credit. However, the main bank of a distressed firm is more reluctant to restrict the credit supply to this firm than a bank with no previous exposure to the company, which might reflect the incentives of the former to engage in loan evergreening. This financial support contributes to keep zombie firms afloat for a longer period than distressed firms. Moreover, the contraction in capital, employment and sales is much larger in distressed firms than in zombie firms.

Did the rise of Chinese import competition in the early 2000s affect banks’ credit supply policies? Using bank-firm-level data on the universe of Spanish corporate loans, we find that banks rebalanced their loan portfolios away from firms facing Chinese import competition and toward profitable firms in nonexposed sectors. Banks supplied more credit also to the construction sector, albeit independently of firms’ profitability. This was not due to banks’ exposure to the housing boom. Rather, the geographical concentration of the manufacturing industries competing with China left local banks with few alternatives other than local construction firms to rebalance their loan portfolios.

This paper empirically characterizes relationship lending using data from more than 20,000 loans of a Spanish bank to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study analyzes the pricing determinants of loans to firms based on the entire previous bank–firm relationship, allowing for the identification of nonlinear pricing patterns in the bank–firm relationship. We show that firms only start capitalizing the gains of relationship lending when the relationship extends beyond two years. This reduction in the loan rate spread charged is driven by the opaque firms, for which the acquisition of “soft” information is especially relevant. Finally, we find that relationship lending significantly mitigates the increased costs of refinancing loans along two dimensions: relationship duration and having additional contracts—other than loans—with the bank.

Before the Covid-19 crisis, zero-bank-debt firms, especially risky ones, faced, due to their lack of credit history, more difficult access to bank loans than firms which previously had bank debt. These credit constraints were tightened by the Covid shock, irrespective of firms’ risk, arguably because of increased information asymmetries during a period of high macroeconomic uncertainty. Zero-bank-debt firms, even those which were safe and profitable, were also far more likely to leave the market during the pandemic than firms which previously had bank debt. However, those zero-bank-debt firms that did obtain new credit reduced their probability of exit.

Using data on Spanish mutual funds, we show that bank-affiliated funds provide funding support to their parent company via purchases of bonds in the primary market. Support from affiliated funds is more sizeable in crisis times and for riskier banks. These trades generate negative abnormal returns and thus benefit banks at the expense of fund investors. To minimize negative effects on their asset management business, banks concentrate the burden of funding support in funds without performance fees and those catering to retail investors. We provide evidence consistent with funding support helping to limit credit rationing over the 2008–2012 period.