We show that sovereign risk does indeed matter for corporate bond
riskwithin the EMU. Higher sovereign risk is associatedwith higher corporate
risk. Results are statistically highly significant for both ratings
and z-spreads. In addition, we find that the influence is stronger for
companies with domestic revenue structure, for companies that are
(partly) owned by the government and companies active in the utility
and transportation sector.With regard to ratings, the effect of sovereign
risk on corporate risk is lower in the sovereign debt crisis period and
higher for z-spreads in the same time period. Sovereign risk has a stronger
effect for Southern European crisis countries, which is only statistically
significant in the z-spread setup. Rating agencies seem to take a
more differentiated view on individual company risk, while investors