Credit spread interdependencies of European states and banks during the financial crisis

We investigate the interdependence of the default risk of several Eurozone countries (France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) and their domestic banks during the period between June 2007 and May 2010, using daily credit default swaps (CDS). Bank bailout programs changed the composition of both banks’ and sovereign balance sheets and, moreover, affected the linkage between the default risk of governments and their local banks. Our main findings suggest that in the period before bank bailouts the contagion disperses from bank credit spreads into the sovereign CDS market. After bailouts, a financial sector shock affects sovereign CDS spreads more strongly in the short run. However, the impact becomes insignificant in the long term. Furthermore, government CDS spreads become an important determinant of banks’ CDS series. The interdependence of government and bank credit risk is heterogeneous across countries, but homogeneous within the same country.     

Banking sector reactions to COVID-19: The role of bank-specific factors and government policy responses

This paper examines the impact of bank-specific factors and variations in the context of stringency of government policy responses on bank stock returns because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 1,927 publicly listed banks from 110 countries is used for the period of the first major wave of COVID-19, that is, January to May 2020. Our findings indicate that stock returns of banks with higher capitalization and deposits, more diversification, lower non-performing loans, and larger size are more resilient to the pandemic. While banks’ environment and governance scores do not have a significant impact, higher social and corporate social responsibility strategy scores intensify the negative stock price reaction to COVID-19. We further observe that the pandemic-induced reduction in bank stock prices is mitigated as the strictness of government policy responses increases, mainly through economic responses such as income support, debt and contract relief, and fiscal measures from governments.     

A Pyrrhic Victory? Bank Bailouts and Sovereign Credit Risk

We model a loop between sovereign and bank credit risk. A distressed financial sector induces government bailouts, whose cost increases sovereign credit risk. Increased sovereign credit risk in turn weakens the financial sector by eroding the value of its government guarantees and bond holdings. Using credit default swap (CDS) rates on European sovereigns and banks, we show that bailouts triggered the rise of sovereign credit risk in 2008. We document that post‐bailout changes in sovereign CDS explain changes in bank CDS even after controlling for aggregate and bank‐level determinants of credit spreads, confirming the sovereign‐bank loop.     

The impact of sovereign rating actions on bank ratings in emerging markets

This paper analyses the effects of sovereign rating actions on the credit ratings of banks in emerging markets, using a sample from three global rating agencies across 54 countries for 1999–2009. Despite widespread attention to sovereign ratings and bank ratings, no previous study has investigated the link in this manner. We find that sovereign rating upgrades (downgrades) have strong effects on bank rating upgrades (downgrades). The impact of sovereign watch status on bank rating actions is much weaker and often insignificant. The sensitivity of banks’ ratings to sovereign rating actions is affected by the countries’ economic and financial freedom and by macroeconomic conditions. Ratings of banks with different ownership structures are all influenced strongly by the sovereign rating, with some variation depending on the countries’ characteristics. Emerging market bank ratings are less likely to follow sovereign rating downgrades during the recent financial crisis period.     

The credit crisis around the globe: Why did some banks perform better?

Though overall bank performance from July 2007 to December 2008 was the worst since the Great Depression, there is significant variation in the cross-section of stock returns of large banks across the world during that period. We use this variation to evaluate the importance of factors that have been put forth as having contributed to the poor performance of banks during the credit crisis. The evidence is supportive of theories that emphasize the fragility of banks financed with short-term capital market funding. The better-performing banks had less leverage and lower returns immediately before the crisis. Differences in banking regulations across countries are generally uncorrelated with the performance of banks during the crisis, except that large banks from countries with more restrictions on bank activities performed better and decreased loans less. Our evidence poses a substantial challenge to those who argue that poor bank governance was a major cause of the crisis because we find that banks with more shareholder-friendly boards performed significantly worse during the crisis than other banks, were not less risky before the crisis, and reduced loans more during the crisis.     

Bank stock returns and economic growth

Previous research has established (i) that a country’s financial sector influence future economic growth and (ii) that stock market index returns affect future economic growth. We extend and tie together these two strands of the growth literature by analyzing the relationship between banking industry stock returns and future economic growth. Using dynamic panel techniques to analyze panel data from 18 developed and 18 emerging markets, we find a positive and significant relationship between bank stock returns and future GDP growth that is independent of the previously documented relationship between market index returns and economic growth. We also find that much of the informational content of bank stock returns is captured by country-specific and institutional characteristics, such as bank-accounting-disclosure standards, banking crises, enforcement of insider trading law and government ownership of banks.     

How Much of Bank Credit Risk Is Sovereign Risk? Evidence from Europe

We examine European banks' exposures to systematic and country‐specific sovereign risk. We organize our investigation around a multifactor affine credit risk model estimated on credit default swap data of different maturities. During the 2008–15 period, about one third of banks' credit risk is sovereign. However, banks strongly differ both in the magnitude and type of their sovereign exposures. Measures of indirect exposures, such as bank size and return on equity, capture these cross‐sectional differences better than measures of direct exposures. Furthermore, the properties of the distress risk premiums turn out to be important to understand the effect of sovereign risk on bank funding costs.     

The impact of FDICIA on bank returns and risk: Evidence from the capital markets

This study examines the impact of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) of 1991 on bank stock returns and risk. We find that FDICIA had a generally positive effect on bank stock returns and resulted in a significant reduction in bank risk. The extent of the risk reduction varies based on the capitalization, size, and credit risk of the institutions with poorly capitalized, large, and high credit risk banks experiencing the greatest risk reduction. The results obtained using two separate control groups also bolster the conclusion that FDICIA’s passage resulted in a significant decline in bank risk.     

Japan’s banking crisis: An event-study perspective

We calculate abnormal stock returns for Japanese non-financial companies around major events associated with the banking crisis (1995–2000), and find that not all companies were equally sensitive to the malaise of the banking sector: the most affected were small, leveraged, low-tech companies with low credit ratings and low market to book ratios. This is consistent with “credit crunch” theories (companies with limited access to financial markets are sensitive to changes in bank lending) and with claims that innovation is rarely financed by bank debt. We do not find much evidence on the alleged misallocation of loans to support ailing bank clients.     

Safer ratios,riskier portfolios: Banks׳ response to government aid

Using novel data on bank applications to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), we study the effect of government assistance on bank risk taking. Bailed-out banks initiate riskier loans and shift assets toward riskier securities after receiving government support. However, this shift in risk occurs mostly within the same asset class and, therefore, remains undetected by regulatory capital ratios, which indicate improved capitalization at bailed-out banks. Consequently, these banks appear safer according to regulatory ratios, but show an increase in volatility and default risk. These findings are robust to controlling for credit demand and account for selection of TARP recipients by exploiting banks? geography-based political connections as an instrument for bailout approvals.     

An Empirical Study of International Spillover of Sovereign Risk to Bank Credit Risk

The severity and complexity of the recent financial crisis has motivated the need for understanding the relationships between sovereign ratings and bank credit ratings. This is the first study to examine the impact of the “international” spillover of sovereign risk to bank credit risk through both a ratings channel and an asset holdings channel. In the first case, the downgrade of sovereign ratings in GIIPS (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) countries leads to rating downgrades of banks in the peripheral countries. The second channel indicates that larger asset holdings of GIIPS debt increases the credit risk of cross‐border banks, and hence, the probabilities of downgrade.     

Asset Pricing with a Bank Risk Factor

This paper studies how the state of the banking sector influences stock returns of nonfinancial firms. We consider a two‐factor pricing model, where the first factor is the traditional market excess return and the second factor is the change in the average distance to default of commercial banks. We find that this bank factor is priced in the cross section of U.S. nonfinancial firms. Controlling for market beta, the expected excess return for a stock in the top quintile of bank risk exposure is on average 2.83% higher than for a stock in the bottom quintile.     

Does the European Financial Stability Facility Bail Out Sovereigns or Banks? An Event Study

On May 9, 2010 euro zone countries announced the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility. This paper investigates the impact of this announcement on bank share prices, bank credit default swap (CDS) spreads, and sovereign CDS spreads. The main private beneficiaries were bank creditors. Furthermore, countries with banking systems heavily exposed to southern Europe and Ireland benefited, as evidenced by lower sovereign CDS spreads. The combined gains of bank debt holders and shareholders exceed the increase in the value of their banks’ sovereign debt exposures, suggesting that banks saw their contingent claim on the financial safety net increase in value.     

Sovereign to Corporate Risk Spillovers

The first Greek bailout on April 11, 2010 triggered a significant reevaluation of sovereign credit risk across Europe. We exploit this event to examine the transmission of sovereign to corporate credit risk. A 10% increase in sovereign credit risk raises corporate credit risk on average by 1.1% after the bailout. The evidence is suggestive of risk spillovers from sovereign to corporate credit risk through a financial and a fiscal channel, as the effects are more pronounced for firms that are bank or government dependent. We find no support for indirect risk transmission through a deterioration of macroeconomic fundamentals.     

Governance and bank characteristics in the credit and sovereign debt crises – the impact of CEO power

The global financial sector recently suffered from two interrelated crises: the credit crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. A common question is whether the recent experience with the credit crisis has helped in dealing with the sovereign debt crisis. We study more specifically whether banks with powerful CEOs perform better or worse than other banks, and if there is any difference in this relationship between the two crises. Using unique hand-collected data for 378 large global banks, we find that CEO power has a significant positive relation to bank profitability and asset quality, but also to insolvency risk, during the sovereign debt crisis. Thus, strong CEOs do not appear to be detrimental to bank performance. Our results also support the idea that deposit insurance may have contributed to the credit crisis.     

Bank/sovereign risk spillovers in the European debt crisis

This paper investigates contagion between bank and sovereign default risk in Europe over the period 2007–2012. We define contagion as excess correlation, i.e. correlation between banks and sovereigns over and above what is explained by common factors, using CDS spreads at the bank and at the sovereign level. Moreover, we investigate the determinants of contagion by analyzing bank-specific as well as country-specific variables and their interaction. Using the EBA’s disclosure of sovereign exposures of banks, we provide empirical evidence that three contagion channels are at work: a guarantee channel, an asset holdings channel and a collateral channel. We find that banks with a weak capital buffer, a weak funding structure and less traditional banking activities are particularly vulnerable to risk spillovers. At the country level, the debt ratio is the most important driver of contagion. Furthermore, the impact of government interventions on contagion depends on the type of intervention, with outright capital injections being the most effective measure in reducing spillover intensity.     

Are banks too big to fail or too big to save? International evidence from equity prices and CDS spreads

Deteriorating public finances around the world raise doubts about countries’ abilities to bail out their largest banks. For an international sample of banks, this paper investigates the impact of bank size and government deficits on bank stock prices and CDS spreads. We find that a bank’s market-to-book value is negatively related to the size of its liabilities-to-GDP ratio, especially in countries running large public deficits. CDS spreads appear to decrease with stronger public finances. These results suggest that systemically important banks can increase their value by downsizing or splitting up, especially if they are located in countries with weak public finances. We document that banks’ average liabilities-to-GDP ratio reached a peak in 2007 before a significant drop in 2008, which could reflect these private incentives to downsize.     

Do Sovereign Re‐Ratings Destabilize Equity Markets during Financial Crises? New Evidence from Higher Return Moments

This study investigates the effects of S&P's sovereign re‐ratings on the higher moments of equity market returns over recent financial crises. Using a set of intraday stock market index prices and sovereign credit ratings for a sample of 36 countries that experienced sovereign rating changes over the period from 1996 to 2013, we find that the higher moments of stock market returns are significantly more responsive to sovereign re‐ratings during financial crises, but the effects on stock markets are not the same across different financial crises. The effects during crises are, however, magnified for large downgrades and those that are associated with a loss of investment grade status. We find that there are asymmetric effects during financial crises in that downgrades are consistently more significant than upgrades in increasing realized volatility and realized kurtosis. Both upgrades and downgrades affect realized skewness in times of crises in the expected direction.     

Stale Information,Shocks, and Volatility

We propose a new approach to measuring the effect of unobservable private information on volatility. Using intraday data, we estimate the effect of a well‐identified shock on the volatility of stock returns of European banks as a function of the quality of public information available about the banks. We hypothesize that as publicly available information becomes stale, volatility effects and its persistence increase, as private information of investors becomes more important. We find strong support for this idea in the data. We further show that stock volatility is higher just before important announcements if information is stale.