Distressed firms, zombie firms and zombie lending: a taxonomy

Laura Álvarez-Román, Miguel Garcia-Posada and Sergio Mayordomo

No 2219, Working Papers from Banco de España

Abstract: 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 find 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 supply of credit to such firm than a bank with no previous exposure to the company, which may reflect the incentives of the former to engage in loan evergreening. This financial support contributes to keeping 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.

Keywords: taxonomy of firms; distressed firms; zombie firms; credit supply; loan evergreening; real effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G32 G33 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2022-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cfn, nep-eec, nep-fdg and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bde.es/f/webbde/SES/Secciones/Publicac ... 22/Files/dt2219e.pdf First version, May 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Distressed firms, zombie firms and zombie lending: A taxonomy (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bde:wpaper:2219

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Banco de España Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ángel Rodríguez. Electronic Dissemination of Information Unit. Research Department. Banco de España ().