Does the stock market value bank diversification?

This paper investigates whether or not functionally diversified banks have a comparative advantage in terms of long-term performance/risk profile compared to their specialized competitors. To that end, this study uses market-based measures of return potential and bank risk. We calculate the franchise value over time of European banks as a measure of their long-run performance potential. In addition, we measure risk as both the systematic and the idiosyncratic risk components derived from a bank stock return model. Finally, we analyze the return/risk trade-off implied in different functional diversification strategies using a panel data analysis over the period 1989–2004. A higher share of non-interest income in total income affects banks’ franchise values positively. Diversification of revenue streams from distinct financial activities increases the systematic risk of banks while the effect on the idiosyncratic risk component is non-linear and predominantly downward-sloping. These findings have conflicting implications for different stakeholders, such as investors, bank shareholders, bank managers and bank supervisors.     

Institutional development and bank stability: Evidence from transition countries

This paper takes advantage of the dynamic nature of institutional reforms in transition economies and explores the causal effects of those reforms on bank risk. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that banks’ financial stability increases substantially after these countries reform their legal institutions, liberalize banking, and restructure corporate governance. We also find that the effects of legal and governance reforms on bank risk may critically depend on the progress of banking reforms. A further examination of alternative risk measures reveals that the increases in financial stability among banks mainly come from the reduction of asset risk. Banks tend to have lower ROA volatility and fewer nonperforming loans after reforming the institutional environment. Finally, we split our sample into foreign and domestic banks and find that the enhancement of financial stability is more pronounced for domestic banks.     

Corporate Governance, Opaque Bank Activities, and Risk/Return Efficiency: Pre- and Post-Crisis Evidence from Turkey

Does better corporate governance unambiguously improve the risk/return efficiency of banks? Or does either a re-orientation of banks’ revenue mix towards more opaque products, an economic downturn, or tighter supervision create off-setting or reinforcing effects? The authors relate bank efficiency to shortfalls from a stochastic risk/return frontier. They analyze how internal governance mechanisms (CEO duality, board experience, political connections, and education profile) and external governance mechanisms (discipline exerted by shareholders, depositors, or skilled employees) determine efficiency in a sample of Turkish banks. The 2000 financial crisis was a wake-up call for bank efficiency and corporate governance. As a result, better corporate governance mechanisms have been able to improve risk/return efficiency when the economic, regulatory, and supervisory environments are more stable and bank products are more complex.     

Auditor choice and bank risk taking

We investigate the importance of auditor choice on bank risk-taking in a cross-country setting for 5498 banks from 116 emerging and developed countries. Using the Z-score as our main proxy for bank risk, we report evidence that hiring a Big Four auditing firm reduces bank-risk even after controlling for bank and country variables. The reported evidence is valid for banks outside the United States and is robust to concerns relating to endogeneity and alternative banking risk measures. The results are economically meaningful. All else constant, the Z-score of a bank audited by a Big Four firm is 10.4% higher than a similar bank with a non-BIG Four auditor. Moreover, consistent with the view that Big Four auditors serve a corporate governance mechanism in emerging markets, we find that Big Four auditors maintain the ability to curb bank risk in countries characterized by weak institutions. Finally, our results suggest that while audit quality is associated with bank safety, its impact is reduced in countries that require audit-oversight.     

US government TARP bailout and bank lottery behavior

Considerable debate surrounds how the US government's TARP bailout intervention has affected the risk-taking and moral hazard behavior of U.S. banks around the global financial crisis. We examine this issue with a focus on lottery behavior introducing MAX/MIN as a new measure of lotteryness in banking to capture the loss protection from bank bailout guarantees. We find that the TARP bailout increased the likelihood of bank lotteryness and risk shifting. Lottery-like bank equities are riskier after TARP and exhibit fatter right to left tails. A consistent pattern of risk taking and lottery behavior extends both before and after the 2008–2009 crisis, engulfing the largest systemic banks (SIFIs). While confirming that lottery-like bank equities have lower short-term return, we find they exhibit better cumulative long-term return performance. Our findings have important policy implications regarding government intervention in banking crises.     

Board characteristics and Chinese bank performance

Using a sample of 50 largest Chinese banks during the period of 2003–2010, we explore a comprehensive set of board characteristics (size, composition and functioning of the board) and analyze their impacts on bank performance and bank asset quality in China. We find that the number of board meetings and the proportion of independent directors have significantly positive impacts on both bank performance and asset quality while board size has a significantly negative impact on bank performance. We find new evidence that the degree of bank boards’ political connection is negatively correlated with bank performance and asset quality. The findings suggest that the board of directors plays a significant role in bank governance in China.     

The role of governance on bank liquidity creation

This paper examines the impact of internal bank governance on bank liquidity creation in the U.S. before, during and after the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Using bank holding company level data, we analyze whether better-governed banks create higher levels of liquidity. We find that this effect is positive and significant but only for large bank holding companies. Further analysis reveals that specific internal governance categories: CEO education, compensation structure, progressive practices, and ownership have a significant effect on bank liquidity. However, this positive effect occurs mostly during the crisis period, and for large banks that are also high liquidity creators. Finally, we find that the effect of governance on liquidity creation increases during the crisis period. These findings are robust even while controlling for liquidity measures, bank size, and endogeneity problems between governance and liquidity creation.     

Corporate governance and bank capitalization strategies

This paper examines the relationship between banks’ capitalization strategies and their corporate governance and executive compensation schemes for an international sample of banks over the 2003–2011 period. Shareholder-friendly corporate governance, in the form of a separation of the CEO and chairman of the board roles, intermediate board size, and an absence of anti-takeover provisions, is associated with lower bank capitalization, consistent with shareholder incentives to shift risk towards the financial safety net. Higher values of executive option and stock wealth invested in the bank are associated with higher capitalization as a potential reflection of executive risk aversion, but the risk-taking incentives embedded in executive compensation packages are associated with lower capitalization.     

Board diversity reforms: Do they matter for EU bank performance?

We examine the impact of governance reforms related to board diversity on the performance of European Union banks. Using a difference‐in‐difference approach, we document that reforms increase bank stock returns and their volatility within the first 3 years after their enactment. The type of reform matters, with quotas increasing return volatility. The effectiveness of reforms depends on a country's institutional environment. The impact of reforms on return volatility is found to be beneficial in countries more open to diversity, with common law system and with greater economic freedom. Finally, reforms play a bigger role in banks that have ex ante less heterogeneous boards.     

Financial liberalisation,crisis, and restructuring: A comparative study of bank performance and bank governance in South East Asia

This paper examines the impact of changes in bank governance on bank performance for a sample of commercial banks operating in SE Asia between 1990 and 2003. We identify bank governance in terms of bank ownership and measure bank performance as rank order alternative profit efficiency, technical change, and productivity. The period was characterised by financial deregulation, the Asian crisis and bank restructuring programmes. To resolve financial distress, SE Asian authorities implemented inter alia bank privatisation programmes and widened access for foreign ownership. Our results tend to support bank privatisation and the repeal of state ownership on economic grounds. We suggest the potential benefits of foreign ownership may take longer to be realised. For domestic private-owned banks, the challenge is improving bank efficiency.     

What firm risk factors drive bank loan pricing and other terms? Evidence from China

This study investigates how firm risk factors affect bank loan pricing. Although firm-specific stock price crash risk affects bank loan costs directly, it also prompts other risks, including financial restatement and litigation, which in turn trigger higher bank loan costs. Strong internal and external governance mechanisms help reduce agency problems and improve information transparency, alleviating the adverse effect of stock price crash risk on loan costs. Our results confirm that bankers take good corporate governance into account in their bank loan decisions. We also show that bond investors price the adverse effect of stock price crash risk, prompting higher corporate bond costs. Futher evidence suggests that banks impose stricter non-price terms, such as smaller loan size, shorter loan maturity, and a higher likelihood of collateral requirement, on firms with higher crash risk.     

Shareholder protection and bank executive compensation after the global financial crisis

We use a hand-collected international database to analyze the change in the risk-taking incentives embedded in bank executive compensation after the onset of the global financial crisis. Our results reveal a reduction in both the risk sensitivity of stock option grants (vega) and total and cash pay-risk sensitivities in countries suffering systemic banking crises. This reduction is greater in countries with strong shareholder protection, especially in banks with good corporate governance, solvent banks, and banks that suffered a reduction in their specific investment opportunity set. The regressions control for government intervention, banking development, and crisis intensity. Our results confirm that the contracting hypothesis is more relevant in countries with stronger shareholder protection, and provide support for measures improving shareholder rights in the approval of bank executive compensation.     

National culture and bank risk-taking: Contradictory case of individualism

Previous studies have reported a positive association between the cultural dimension of individualism and bank risk-taking. We hypothesize that this association is likely to be confounded by the omitted effects of corporate governance. Given the indicative evidence that such confounders are less likely to affect listed banks, we test this association for a global sample of 467 commercial listed banks from 56 countries. Our results show that the association between individualism and bank risk-taking is negative. This result is consistent with the cushioning hypothesis, the idea that people take on more risk in collectivist societies because they expect to receive help from the members of their social networks in the case of failure.     

Bond market development and bank stability: Evidence from emerging markets

We investigate how bond market development shapes banks’ risk taking in terms of portfolio structure, liquidity risk, and overall bank risk. Exploiting a bank-level database of 26 emerging markets, we find that larger bond markets are associated with stronger bank liquidity positions, lower portfolio risk of banks, and higher overall stability of banks. The effect of bond market development on bank risk taking remains robust across different levels of bank size and capital sufficiency. Overall, we find new evidence of a complementary relationship between bond market development and bank soundness.     

Bank accounting conservatism and bank loan pricing

This paper studies the effects of bank accounting conservatism on the pricing of syndicated bank loans. We provide evidence that banks timelier in loss recognition charge higher spreads. We go onto consider what happens to the relationship between spreads and timeliness in loss recognition during the financial crisis. During the crisis, banks timelier in loss recognition increase their spreads to a lesser extent than banks less timely in loss recognition. These findings are broadly consistent with the argument that conditional accounting conservatism serves a governance role. The policy implication is that banks timelier in loss recognition exhibit more prudent and less pro-cyclical loan pricing behaviour.     

Risky lending: Does bank corporate governance matter?

We study the effect of bank governance on risk-taking in commercial lending. Banks with more effective boards are less likely to lend to riskier borrowers. This effect is restricted to periods of distress in the banking industry and is stronger at banks with board-level credit committees. Banks with more effective boards are less likely to lend to riskier borrowers right after the Russian default, which exogenously imposed distress conditions on U.S. banks. Thus, value-maximizing banks appear to ration credit to riskier borrowers precisely when such firms might be credit-constrained, suggesting that bank governance regulations may have potential unintended consequences.     

The role of managerial incentives in bank acquisitions

This paper examines the effect of variables related to management incentives, corporate governance, and performance on the likelihood a bank is acquired. We find that banks with higher levels of management ownership are less likely to be acquired, particularly in acquisitions where target managers depart from their jobs following the acquisition. We document high rates of management turnover following bank acquisitions. This evidence is consistent with an entrenchment hypothesis, where management teams block attempts to be acquired. We find little evidence that any other incentive, governance, or performance variables are systematically related to the probability a bank is acquired.     

Gender diversity and bank misconduct

This paper investigates whether gender-diverse bank boards can play a role in preventing costly misconduct episodes. We exploit the fines received by European banks from US regulators to reduce endogeneity issues related to supervisory and governance mechanisms. We show that greater female representation significantly reduces the frequency of misconduct fines, equivalent to savings of $7.48 million per year. Female directors are more influential when they reach a critical mass and are supported by women in leadership roles. The mechanism through which gender diversity affects board effectiveness in preventing misconduct stems from the ethicality and risk aversion of the female directors, rather than their contribution to diversity. The findings are robust to alternative model specifications, proxies for gender diversity, reverse causality, country and bank controls, and sub-sample analyses.     

Interest rates and bank risk-taking

A recent line of research views the low interest-rate environment of the early to mid 2000s as an element that triggered increased risk-taking appetite of banks in search for yield. This paper uses approximately 18000 annual observations on euro area banks over the period 2001-2008 and presents strong empirical evidence that low-interest rates indeed increase bank risk-taking substantially. This result is robust across a number of different specifications that account, inter alia, for the potential endogeneity of interest rates and/or the dynamics of bank risk. Notably, among the banks of the large euro area countries this effect is less pronounced for French institutions, which held on average a relatively low level of risk assets. Finally, the distributional effects of interest rates on bank risk-taking due to individual bank characteristics reveal that the impact of interest rates on risk assets is diminished for banks with higher equity capital and is amplified for banks with higher off-balance sheet items.     

Audit committees’ oversight of bank risk-taking

This study examines whether audit committee effectiveness affects bank risk-taking and risk management effectiveness. We find that banks with long board tenure audit committees have lower total risk and idiosyncratic risk, and banks with busy directors on their audit committees have higher total risk and idiosyncratic risk. These suggest that high audit committee effectiveness may constrain bank risk-taking activities. We also find that firm performance is more positively associated with bank risk for banks with long board tenure, more female audit committee members, or large size audit committees than for other banks, consistent with the notion that audit committee effectiveness may increase risk management effectiveness. However, this finding should be interpreted cautiously as it is contrary to the results on audit committee busyness.