Financial Statement Disaggregation and Bank Loan Pricing

We analyze whether the disaggregation quality (DQ) of a borrower’s financial statement is associated with its bank loan pricing. We find that firms with low DQ have high bank loan spreads and total cost of borrowing. These results are more pronounced for risky and poorly governed firms. Moreover, a low DQ is associated with a high likelihood of requiring collateral, low credit rating, and high bond issuing spreads. Overall, our results suggest that DQ conveys valuable credit quality information to bank loan lenders.