The disposal of zombie firms has always been a focus for the capital mar-ket and regulators,but there is relatively little research on the spread of high leverage fin-ancial policies among zombie firms.Interlocking directorates act as intermediaries con-necting zombie and non-zombie firms.Do interlocking directorates promote the spread of high leverage financial policies from zombie firms to non-zombie firms?Our results show that non-zombie firms with interlocking directorates from zombie firms have a signific-antly lower leverage than other non-zombie firms,indicating a positive role played by in-terlocking directorates.Moreover,the lower a non-zombie firm's asset-liability ratio,the more interlocking directorates it has from zombie firms,or the higher the proportion of independent directors among those interlocking directorates.Mechanism analysis sug-gests that the reason for the aforementioned phenomenon is that interlocking directorates have played an informational role in spreading information between zombie and non-zombie firms,raising non-zombie firms'risk perception,thus encouraging the boards to adopt a more conservative capital structure.Furthermore,this inhibitory effect is more pronounced in private firms,however,if interlocking directorates come from peer firms,this effect is weakened.Our findings suggest that interlocking directors effectively fulfill their advisory roles without causing the spread of high leverage financial policies,which provides empirical evidence for preventing and mitigating major financial risks.
维普
万方数据