Firms face a trade-off between patenting, thereby disclosing innovation, and secrecy. In this paper, we show that this trade-off extends to financing relationships. We exploit the American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999, which forced firms to disclose the content of their patent applications within 18 months after filing for them. Firms in industries that experienced a greater change in the publicity of their patent applications were significantly more likely to break up their previous banking relationships and switch lenders. In addition, we explore whether deeper banking relationships tip the trade-off in favor of secrecy by increasing the value of private information. Consistent with this conjecture, we find that increased lender informedness following the creation of universal banks leads to fewer patents issued by publicly listed U.S. firms, without affecting investment in innovation and its outcomes, such as new-product announcements.