Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Bank Capital

The focus of this paper is on the interaction between a bail-out loan decision of a bank to a sovereign borrower and the adequacy of the bank's capital. The new loan is granted on two conditions: First, it must improve the likelihood of repayment of the outstanding loan; second the bank should have adequate capital.We find that in general a positive relationship exists between capital and the bail out loan and between existing debt and the new loan. However, under certain circumstances a negative relationship exists between the bank's capital and the new loan. Empirical results support the main implications of the theoretical model.