商业信用能够帮助企业渡过金融危机吗?

Can Trade Credit Help Enterprises to Survive the Financial Crisis

本文利用2004～2012年中国A股上市公司的数据，研究了2008年金融危机期间银行信用、商业信用变化情况及两者之间的关系。研究发现，金融危机期间，我国上市公司难以获得足够银行贷款，只能通过商业信用获得替代性的资金来源。但是，对供应链资金的过度占用并不能持续，随着危机的逐步加深，上市公司对商业信用的净占用反而会减少。对于财务状况差或非国有的上市公司，这种现象尤其明显。总之，商业信用是供给与需求共同作用下的一种均衡，是资金在供应链上的重新分配。金融危机中，它只能提供暂时资金支持，而不能“一劳永逸”。

The explosion of 2008 global financial crisis brought great damage to the world＇s economy, during which not only did consumption decrease and bad debts increase in commodity market, but also bank loan standard was raised and investment scale by shareholders was deducted in capital market. In such desperation, many enterpri ses turned to trade credit for silver lining, by attempting to gain as much trade credit as they can to obtain more a bundant liquidity,thus reducing their financial risks. But would it really work？ Using a sample of empirical data from 2004 to 2012 of Ashare listed companies in China,this paper tends said companies. We sorted year 2008- 2012 as the financial crisis period damage through analysis. We will be focusing on how trade credit reacted to to analyze the impact the crisis had on since it appeared to suffer more explicit financial crisis, and how Alternative Fi nancing Theory would explain the situation. Moreover, based on previous researches, we come up with a more com prehensive definition method for trade credit. Meanwhile, the paper innovatively takes a peek at the relationship be tween trade credit and property rights. The study ends up with a series of constructive conclusions. Firstly, during financial crisis, the market worried about the solvency of financial institutions, reluctant to provide financing, resulting in Banks＇ liquidity shortage. At the same time, product sales went through serious difficulties and profit dropped sharply, leading to massive deduction, restructuring and bankruptcy of enterprises, which was a concern for banks surely. As fear of crisis spread, lack of liquidity became the main factors of financial markets, causing banks to raise loan threshold. Chinese listed companies could barely get enough bank loans and the situation was worsening as the crisis deepened. Secondly, as the impact of financial crisis continued to deteriorate, companies＇ net trade credit reduced instead. During financial crisis, many enterprises were on the brink of bankruptcy, needing of survival coming before making profit, which left ample liquidity becoming the most important issue. Therefore, enterprises tend to try every means to maximize their net trade credit. However, in the period of financial crisis, money was quite tight for most companies, especially for small companies. Besides, companies of higher debt ratio, lower return on assets, less cash holdings, and less cash flow tend to face greater financial risk. Although the demand for trade credit should be more urgent in less performed companies, their customers and suppliers were relatively pessimistic about their prospects and financial crisis would further ac celerate this pessimism, making it harder for said companies to gain trade credit. As we all know, Stateowned com panies usually have strong antirisk and solvency guaranteed abilities. Undoubtedly, creditors would prefer stateowned companies to nonstateowned ones when it comes to offering trade credit help, which means that nonstateowned companies were left with less and less trade credit. Finally, bank loans and trade credit are two essential sources of funds for enterprises. Since bank loan was diffi cult to attain during financial crisis, according to ＂Alternative Financing Theory＂, companies would increase the lev el of trade credit, and the harder the obtainment of bank loan, the higher the net trade credit. Ironically, it is a tend ency that resources float to better equipped and better performed companies. Those nonstateowned companies with weaker market power and poorer financial conditions could hardly utilize trade credit. That means, we would get the conclusion that the alternative relationship between bank loan and trade credit is weakened during financial cri sis. All in all, trade credit which implies a redistribution of the supply chain is equilibrium under the combined ac tion of supply and demand. The financing support during financial crisis trade credit could provide was rather tempo rary than permanent. This research has an important guiding significance in business practice. For example, it is wise of entemrises to increase monetarv fund holdinzs and raise the oroportion of liquid assets during the financial crisis.