Exploiting differential interstate-branching deregulation across contiguous counties of adjacent states, we investigate the effect of entry threat on incumbent banks’ loan-loss provisions. Incumbents exposed to entry threat have offsetting incentives; lower provisions make their loan-underwriting quality appear better, deterring entry, but make local economic conditions appear better, encouraging entry. We find that the incentive to increase apparent loan-underwriting quality dominates on average. We further find that this incentive is stronger in counties with a higher proportion of heterogeneous loans, while the other incentive dominates in counties with both low heterogeneous loans and highly volatile economic conditions.

Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that blockholders (shareholders with ownership ≥ 5 percent) exert governance through the threat of exit. Blockholders have strong incentives to gather private information and sell their shares when managers are perceived to underperform. To prevent blockholders from selling their shares and the firm from suffering a stock price decline, managers align their actions with the interests of shareholders. As a result of the greater manager‐shareholder alignment, managers' actions are more likely to be in shareholders' best interest, and consequently there is less need for managers to manipulate earnings. Consistent with these predictions from economic theory, we find evidence that as exit threat increases, firms have higher financial reporting quality. Theory also predicts that the impact of blockholders' exit threat on financial reporting quality (FRQ) should increase as the manager's wealth is tied more closely to the stock price, and this is what we find. Our study contributes to the research on the impact of shareholders on FRQ and to an emerging literature on the impact of blockholders in financial markets. Blockholders play an important role in managers' reporting outcomes through their actions as informed investors.