일반 논문 : 관계금융이 중소기업 대출구조와 경영성과에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

김문겸 ( Moon Kyum Kim ),이규옥 ( Kyoo Ok Lee ),김순철 ( Soon Choul Kim ) 한국중소기업학회 2011 中小企業硏究 Vol.33 No.2

본 연구는 중소기업에 있어서 관계금융의 효과가 대출구조와 경영성과에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지에 대해 기업의 규모와 업력으로 구분하여 살펴보았다. 본 연구는 관계금융의 편익과 비용 측면에서 벗어나 중소기업의 금융에서 중요한 역할을 하는 규모와 업력에 따라 관계금융이 금리수준과 금융비용에 미치는 영향에 있어 유의미한 차이가 있는지와 관계금융이 중소기업의 규모와 업력에 따라 수익성과 성장성에 차별적인 영향이 있는지를 분석하였다. 연구결과를 요약하면 다음과 같다. 첫째, 관계금융은 중소기업 창업 초기에 자금의 가용성 확보를 위한 유인으로 작용하게 된다. 둘째, 중소기업은 관계금융 형성 시 은행의 우월적 지위를 수용하게 된다는 것이다. 이는 창업 초기의 중소기업이 다양한 방법으로 자금을 조달할 수 없기 때문에 이를 극복하기 위해서는 금융기관과의 유대가 절대적으로 필요하기 때문인 것으로 판단된다. 셋째, 중소기업은 규모가 커지고 성장함에 따라 관계금융의 효익이 낮아진다는 것이다. The fact asymmetric information problems are apt to be much more serious in SMEs than in large companies makes the ways in which they raise debt capital differ significantly. In other words, SME financing through commercial banks often involves a long-term relationship that may mitigate these information problems. As Berger and Udell (2002) mentioned, one of the features of small and medium enterprise (SME) financing is that personal experience and subjective judgment of loan officer in financial intermediaries, particularly commercial banks, can affect decisions and terms of loan for SMEs while large companies typically obtain credit in the public debt markets. This close relationship between banks and companies in financing is called ``relationship banking`` and Boot (2000) mentioned that the relationship banking is established when banks make investments to get clients` information exclusively and provide various financial services through consistent and a wide range of interactions. The relationship banking in Korea has evolved from the one which resembles the ``main-bank system`` in Japan. Korea had adopted the main-bank system to control credit for large business conglomerates in 1982. Those main-banks played roles of controlling client companies financing plans and investments, performing financial analyses, and even promoting the improvements of capital structures. This study tried to investigate how the relationship banking affects financing costs of SMEs and SME performance from perspectives of traditional corporate finance and SME theories. Most existing researches have tried to figure out which party in the relationship banking, between companies and banks, has a superior position in terms of marginal profits and costs. They used the data of public companies, which usually are not SMEs, to analyze the relationship banking. We, however, believe that there must be a different shape of the relationship banking for SMEs and try to find impacts on the level of interest rates charged by banks, the size of interest payments by SMEs, and the managerial performance of SMEs from the perspective of the relationship banking. This study has several features differentiating it from other researches. First, this study has used only non-public SMEs in analysis, which expands our understanding of the relationship banking into the area of non-listed SMEs. Second, we tested if there exists any difference in effects of the relationship banking according to the capitalization size and ages of SMEs. Lastly, this study tried to see not only how the relationship banking affects the level of financial cost, but also the performance of SMEs, which would be the first attempt to relate relationship banking to company performance like profitability and growth. The data used in this study were obtained from the Industrial Bank of Korea data base. The Industrial Bank of Korea is a commercial bank with a focus on SME financing, so it maintains a consistent and complete database for SMEs. The data analyzed in this study was three year panel from 2006 through 2008 which encompasses a total of 7,618 SMEs with more than debt of about 0.9 million US dollars (1 billion Korean won). Classification of firms is made by capitalization size of 6.5 million US dollars (7 billion Korean won), which requires external auditing. If the size of capitalization is greater than 6.5 million US dollars, firms are categorized as a medium firm and a small firm with less capitalization. Also each category is divided into two subsequent categories, so that a total of four categories are involved in the analyses. Also, another classification was introduced in terms of age: one to five years, six to ten years, eleven to twenty years and more than twenty years. Spread between interest rate charged to SMEs and three month-KORIBOR (CDS) and ratio of interest payment and total borrowing (RAB) are employed as dependent variables to figure out how relationship banking affects interest payments of SMEs. Two other dependent variables, ratio of operating income to total assets (INR) and growth rate of assets (GRO), are adopted to investigate a relationship between SMEs` performance and relationship banking. A dummy variable of DBANK as an independent variable is included specifically to see if one main-bank relation has any peculiar impact on the level of interest and company performance. Proxies for relationship banking are borrowing period (LLT), degree of client contribution to bank (CGI), portion of loans without collaterals (NLL), and number of client`s accounts (CRS). It is found that as Pertersen and Rajan (1994), Berger and Udell (1995), and D`Auria et al. (1999) reported, an effect of lowering interest rate through one bank relationship is significant for SMEs with more than 7 billion KRW capitalization, which is required to be externally audited. But, in the group of less than 2 billion KRW, a positive relationship between a one bank-relationship and the level of interest payment is evident. This complies with the arguments of Sharpe (1990) and Rajan (1992) which reported a one bank relationship raised interest rates charged to small firms because banks monopolized information. Banks may require a risk premium based upon their monopolized information when they make loans to SMEs which do not have credit records or collateral, but SMEs can expand their availability of funds through a one bank relationship. Thus, these contradicting results from those previous researches indicate that the effects of relationship banking on the level of interest rates are different depending upon the size of firms. Also, other proxy variable such as CGI (client contribution) reassures that benefits of relationship banking exists for SMEs over a certain size while small firms can not enjoy the benefits of relationship banking in terms of the level of interest rates. Relationship banking, however, increases the availability of funds, especially for smaller firms. Also, as previous studies show, TAR (ratio of tangible assets to total assets) has a meaningful negative relationship with the level of interest rates and the size of interest payments, and OCF (ratio of operating cash flow to total assets) has a meaningful negative relationship with the level of interest rates, which implies that SMEs with larger fixed assets and operating cash flow have more debt capacities. The one bank relationship does not have a clear impact on the actual size of the interest payment. But, other proxies of LLT and NLL indicate the benefits of relationship banking exist in expanding availability of funds, especially for smaller firms. There are not many differential effects of relationship banking on the level of interest rates and the size of interest payments according to the different ages of SMEs. The results of analysis investigating effects of relationship banking on SME performance indicates that there exists differential effects of relationship banking according to the different sizes of SMEs. The one-bank relationship has a generally negative effect on profitability while any significant effect is not found in the largest group with more than 20 billion KRW capitalization. When this is combined with the relationship between proxies of relationship banking (LLT and CGI) and company growth, we can derive another implication that banks tend to maintain long time relationships with clients which are rather stable in their performance. Banks prefer stability of SMEs to growth. Also, the positive coefficient of NLL with company growth indicates that SMEs utilize augmented fund availability through relationship banking to raise their profitability in all groups. It is found that while CDS (level of interest rates) has a negative effect on profitability in the group of greater than 7 billion KRW, RAB (size of interest payment) contributes to increasing profitability in the group of less than 7 billion KRW. This implies that smaller SMEs raise profitability by taking advantage of financial leverage obtained through relationship banking. Meanwhile, it fails to find any meaningful relationship between the number of banks and growth, so that the one-bank relationship does not affect the growth of SMEs, which is contrary to Houston and James (1996).