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Journal of Corporate Finance Vol. 27 2014

The effect of sovereign wealth funds on the credit risk of their portfolio companies

Fabio Bertoni1; Stefano Lugo2

1 École de management de Lyon · 2 Utrecht University

Abstract

We study how sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investments affect the credit risk of target companies as measured by the change in their credit default swap (CDS) spreads around the investment announcement. We find that the CDS spread of target companies decreases, on average, following an SWF investment. The reduction in the CDS spread is higher when the SWF is established by a politically stable non-democratic country that has a neutral political relationship with the host country of the target company. Our results suggest that creditors expect SWFs to protect target companies from bankruptcy when it is in the interest of their home country to build political goodwill in the host country of the company.

DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2014.04.004
Volume
27
Pages
21-35
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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