We find that bond issuers receive bank loans with 12% fewer covenants when the secondary corporate bond market becomes more transparent. The treatment effect is more pronounced when bond trades are more informative, when stock prices are less informative, and when the likelihood of future debt-equity agency conflicts is higher. The evidence suggests that bond prices reflect forward-looking information that mitigates banks’ information risk in debt contracting. As such, banks impose fewer contractual restrictions on bond issuers when bond transactions become publicly observable. We find consistent results using a hand-collected dataset of negative covenants. Treatment firms are also less likely to subsequently renegotiate borrowing terms. Finally, we find corroborating evidence from new primary bond issues. Taken together, our findings suggest that public bond market frictions affect private debt contract design.

我们发现，当二级公司债券市场变得更加透明时，债券发行人获得的银行贷款契约减少 12%。当债券交易信息量更大、股票价格信息量更少以及未来债权代理冲突的可能性更高时，处理效果更为明显。证据表明，债券价格反映了前瞻性信息，可以减轻银行在债务合同中的信息风险。因此，当债券交易公开可见时，银行对债券发行人施加的合同限制较少。我们使用手工收集的负面契约数据集找到了一致的结果。处理公司也不太可能随后重新谈判借款条款。最后，我们从新发行的主要债券中找到了确凿的证据。综合起来，