搜尋公司違反聯貸限制條款的事件：以美國證券交易委員會 EDGAR 系統資料為例

本篇論文的研究動機。由於許多文獻提到債權人在公司治理上從過去的被動位置轉變為主動利用聯合貸款合約中的限制性條款(covenant) 來規範公司營業活動。小至限制公司資本支出、股利發放，大則影響董事會決定公司 CEO 的去留。限制性條款扮演越來越重要的角色。本文探討從 SEC EDGAR filings 中搜尋公司是否面臨限制性條款的違約(in violation of covenants)。本篇論文能降低未來研究在資料建立上需要人工處理的時間，藉由降低錯誤標記的筆數來達成。

Covenant violations in syndicated loan agreements are a key factor which demonstrates a shift in control rights to debt holders before a company enters into events of default. This paper focuses on the methodology of identifying incidents of covenant violations using both programming codes and manual searches. We dedicate to minimize the time in hand-collecting while pursue high hitting rates of true covenant violations in SEC EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) database. Our findings provide a way to access the U.S. firms’ public financial statements reported to SEC and extends the list of companies provided by Nini, Smith and Sufi (2012).