Cost of Debt and Corporate Opacity: The Case of Greek Family-Controlled Firms

This paper expands upon the study of Bethani et. al (2019) regarding the association between firms’ cost of debt and their ownership structure. It is investigated whether corporate information opacity is associated with the level of cost of debt for family- owned firms. We examined a sample of companies listed to the Athens Stock Market at the period of 2017-2019. In line with the findings of Bethani et al. (2019) for the period 2009-2016 we found no significant association between corporate opacity and family ownership. Τhe cost of debt of the sample firms is negatively associated with their liquidity. In addition, we found that sample firms with certain stock price behavior and trading volume tend to finance their activities through the stock market than rather than using bank loans.