EVA® FOR BANKS: VALUE CREATION, RISK MANAGEMENT, AND PROFITABILITY MEASUREMENT

This article presents a complete ranking of America's 100 largest bank holding companies according to their shareholder value added. This research, the first of its kind for the banking industry, defines an EVA measurement for banks and presents evidence of EVA's stronger correlation with bank market values than traditional accounting measures like ROA and ROE. Besides developing EVA and MVA as analytical tools for viewing the economic performance of the organization from a shareholder perspective, the authors also present a framework for calculating EVA at all levels of the organization, including lines of business, functional departments, products, customer segments, and customer relationships. The implementation of an EVA profitability measurement system at the business unit (or lower) level requires methods for three critical tasks: (1) transfer pricing of funds; (2) allocation of indirect expenses; and (3) allocation of economic capital. Although solutions to the first two are fairly straightforward, the allocation of capital to business units is a major challenge for banks today. In contrast to the complex, “bottom-up” approach used by a number of large banks in implementing their RAROC systems, the authors propose a greatly simplified, “top-down” approach that requires calculation of only the volatility of a business's operating profit (or NOPAT). The advantage of using NOPAT volatility is that it allows EVA analysis at any level of the organization in a way that captures the volatility effects from all sources of risk (credit, interest rates, liquidity, or operations). While such a top-down approach is clearly not meant to take the place of a comprehensive, bottom-up RAROC analysis, it is intended to provide a complement–a high-level “check” on the detailed, bottom-up risk management procedures and controls now in place at most banks. Moreover, for those banks that have developed extensive funds transfer pricing, cost allocation, and RAROCstyle capital allocation systems, the EVA financial management system can either be integrated with those systems or serve as an independent economic assessment of the bank's business risks and returns.     

Bankers Trust and the Birth of Modern Risk Management

A leading financial practitioner traces the origins of the risk management concepts and applications widely used in today's financial institutions to their development at Bankers Trust in the 1970s. The bank became a pioneer out of necessity and entrepreneurship. Lacking the relationships with large corporations enjoyed by J.P. Morgan and Chase, Bankers Trust had to find ways to offer financial products its well‐established competitors could not. The innovations in risk management came from the Bank's “Resources Management” group, which was responsible for its trading and funding activities (but not corporate lending). By applying probability theory to its trading positions, the bank found an effective way to measure “market risk.” Extensions and refinements of this methodology were then used to measure credit risk and, later, liquidity risk and operational risk. These statistical methods and probabilistic concepts were brought together in a metric called Risk Adjusted Return On Capital, or “RAROC,” as it eventually became known throughout the financial services industry. RAROC was a concise way to measure and communicate the economic profits that had been generated by a transaction, product, or business unit, given the amount of “risk‐based” equity capital that was necessary to generate that profit. At Bankers Trust, RAROC eventually was used not only to evaluate profitability, but to guide strategic planning, capital allocation, and incentive compensation. And tools incorporating the same concepts, but with names like Value at Risk (or VaR), were later adopted by many other banks as well as regulators, including the framers of the Basel Accords. The author closes by suggesting how and why Bankers Trust's risk management culture began to deteriorate after 1995, and the bank was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1998.     

Bank governance,regulation and risk taking

This paper conducts the first empirical assessment of theories concerning risk taking by banks, their ownership structures, and national bank regulations. We focus on conflicts between bank managers and owners over risk, and we show that bank risk taking varies positively with the comparative power of shareholders within the corporate governance structure of each bank. Moreover, we show that the relation between bank risk and capital regulations, deposit insurance policies, and restrictions on bank activities depends critically on each bank's ownership structure, such that the actual sign of the marginal effect of regulation on risk varies with ownership concentration. These findings show that the same regulation has different effects on bank risk taking depending on the bank's corporate governance structure.     

Bank CEO careers after bailouts: The effects of management turnover on bank risk

We study whether bank bailouts affect CEO turnover and its subsequent impact on bank risk. Exploiting the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2008, we find that TARP funds temporarily decreased the likelihood of bank CEO turnover during the crisis (2008–2010) but significantly increased CEO changes afterwards. Our results show that replacing TARP CEOs reduced individual bank's risk as well as the bank's contributions to the systemic risk. Finally, we find that TARP CEO turnover was mainly driven by a decrease in the bank's political capital. Overall we provide evidence that bank bailouts have important implications for banks’ risk-taking and systemic risk, insofar as bailouts affect bank CEO turnover.     

An Incentive Approach to Banking Regulation

We examine the optimal design of a risk-adjusted deposit insurance scheme when the regulator has less information than the bank about the inherent risk of the bank's assets (adverse selection), and when the regulator is unable to monitor the extent to which bank resources are being directed away from normal operations toward activities that lower asset quality (moral hazard). Under a socially optimal insurance scheme: (1) asset quality is below the first-best level, (2) higher-quality banks have larger asset bases and face lower capital adequacy requirements than lower-quality banks, and (3) the probability of failure is equated across banks.     

Earnings and capital management and signaling: the use of loan-loss provisions by European banks

This paper investigates the relationship between loan-loss provisions (LLPs) and earnings management in the context of the capital adequacy of Euro Area (EA) banks versus non-EA credit institutions. This paper also examines whether LLPs signal managements’ expectations concerning future bank profits to investors. Additionally, this paper traces the role of bank regulations and creditor protection systems in explaining income smoothing. Evidence drawn from the 1996 to 2006 period indicates that LLPs do reflect changes in the expected quality of a bank's loan portfolio for both groups of banks, and that earnings management is an important determinant of LLPs for EA intermediaries, whereas non-EA credit institutions use LLPs to signal private information to outsiders. The paper also finds that higher protection of creditors’ rights significantly reduces the incentives to smooth earnings for EA banks. During the recent financial crisis, EA bank managers are much more concerned with their credit portfolio quality and do not use LLPs for discretionary purposes, whereas LLPs at non-EA banks are used to smooth income more than for the purposes of managing capital ratios or conveying private information about future performance to the market.     

当前如何看待银行设立资管子公司：趋势与挑战

2018年4月资管新规出台,对银行理财业务的规范发展做出了一系列要求。新规明 确指出：过渡期后,具有证券投资基金托管业务资质的商业银行应当设立具有独立法人地位的 子公司开展资产管理业务。截至2017年末,银行理财业务规模近30万亿,其一举一动对整个资 管市场有着举足轻重的影响。本文从监管政策发展、成熟资管市场的经验、人口老龄化加速趋 势三个角度阐述了银行在当前设立资管子公司的背景条件,并分析了未来银行资管子公司发 展的趋势以及面临的挑战。     

A NEW APPROACH TO CAPITAL BUDGETING FOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

The classic approach to capital budgeting based on the standard Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) says that the hurdle rate (or cost of capital) for any new project or investment should depend only on the riskiness of that investment. Thus, the hurdle rate, and hence the expected value of the investment, should not be affected by the financial policy of the company evaluating the project. Nor should the hurdle rate be influenced by the company's risk management policy, or by the kind of assets it already has on the balance sheet. This article argues that such a “singlefactor” model may be inappropriate for banks and other financial institutions for two main reasons:

• ? it is especially costly for banks to raise new external funds on short notice;
• ? it is costly for banks to hold a buffer stock of equity capital on the balance sheet, even if this equity is accumulated over time through retained earnings.

The single-factor CAPM ignores such costs and, in so doing, understates the true economic costs of “illiquid” bank investments. Illiquid investments require special treatment because they impose risks that, although “diversifiable” by shareholders, cannot be readily hedged by the bank and therefore require it to hold more equity capital. The authors accordingly propose a “two-factor” model for capital budgeting— one in which banks' investment decisions are linked to their capital structure and risk management decisions. One of the key implications of the two-factor model is that a bank should evaluate new investments according to both their correlation with the market portfolio and their correlation with the bank's existing portfolio of unhedgeable risks. The authors describe several potential applications of their model, including the evaluation of proprietary trading operations and the pricing of unhedgeable derivatives positions. They also compare their approach to the RAROC methodology that has been adopted by a number of banks.     

Do capital adequacy requirements reduce risks in banking?

In a dynamic framework it is shown that capital adequacy rules may increase a bank's riskiness. In addition to the standard negative effect of rents on risk attitudes of banks a further intertemporal effect has to be considered. The intuition behind the result is that under binding capital requirements an additional unit of equity tomorrow is more valuable to a bank. If raising equity is excessively costly, the only possibility to increase equity tomorrow is to increase risk today.     

The bank capital channel and bank profits

This paper develops a microeconomic model of banking to highlight an endogenous loan creation process that emerges from bank profits via the capital accumulation of retained earnings and uses a simple bank capital‐loan multiplier to illustrate constraints on lending. The study also analyzes how sufficient net interest margins are important for banks to maintain lending portfolios and avoid financial fragility. The model offers support to bank capital channel (BKC) economists by illustrating how changes in interest rates may influence bank lending through the bank's internal capital accumulation growth rate and on a bank's portfolio choices.     

Implications of bank regulation for loan supply and bank stability: a dynamic perspective

ABSTRACT

We show that internal funds play a particular role in the regulation of bank capital, which has not received much attention, yet. A bank's decision on loan supply and capital structure determines its immediate bankruptcy risk as well as the future availability of internal funds. These internal funds in turn determine a bank's future costs of external finance and its future vulnerability to bankruptcy risks. Using a partial equilibrium model, we study how internal funds affect these intra- and intertemporal links. Moreover, our positive analysis identifies the effects of risk-weighted capital-to-asset ratios, liquidity coverage ratios and regulatory margin calls on the dynamics of internal funds and thus loan supply and bank stability. Only regulatory margin calls or large liquidity coverage ratios achieve bank stability for all risk levels, but for large risks a bank will stop credit intermediation.     

Bank capital in the crisis: It's not just how much you have but who provides it

Bank capital is the cornerstone of bank regulation and is considered a key determinant of a bank's ability to withstand economic shocks. In the area of bank capital regulation, the general view is that more bank capital is better, irrespective of who provides it. In this paper, we investigate whether the investment horizon of bank capital providers matters for bank performance during the recent financial crisis. We observe that banks with more short-term investor ownership have worse stock returns during the crisis. Further exploration suggests that this is partially because banks with higher short-term investor ownership took more risk prior to the crisis but mainly because they experienced higher selling pressure during the crisis. Our results confirm the economic benefit of bank capital in helping banks to perform better during crises. However, when we decompose bank capital by the nature of its providers, we show that more capital is associated with worse performance when it is provided by short-term institutional investors.     

BANK REGULATIONS,CAPITAL STRUCTURE,AND RISK

The joint influence of the Federal Reserve's (Fed) discount window credit and reserve requirements and FDIC's deposit insurance on a bank's optimal capital structure and asset risk choices is analyzed. The specific seniority of such regulatory claims, and potentially strong negative correlation between bank asset classes, significantly alters our traditional view of such regulatory influences on bank behavior. I find that the discount window's presence does not always prompt bank risk taking and leverage, but it does partially offset such incentives under certain conditions. In addition to its cost, a reserve requirement provides the bank with an indirect subsidy that may encourage deposit funding. Thus, regulatory reforms, such as the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991, which curtail banks' access to the discount window, may not always be appropriate to resolve a bank's incentive for moral hazard behavior. The Fed's presence needs to be more comprehensively examined to design effective regulatory policy.     

Bank capital allocation under multiple constraints

We study how a bank allocates capital across its business units when facing multiple constraints over several periods. If a constraint tightens – be it because of stricter regulation or higher risk – capital flows to the more efficient unit, i.e. the unit offering a higher marginal return on required capital. Relative efficiency helps explain how a policy measure targeting a specific business unit – e.g. imposing requirements for market risk, or ring-fencing lending – spills over to another, seemingly unrelated unit. It also helps explain the bank’s response to the tightening of a constraint that is contemporaneously slack but likely to bind later on.     

RAROC在中国商业银行实务中的计量及其系统构建

有效的风险管理是银行价值实现的一个重要手段。基于商业银行在业务拓展中均衡收益风险的思想,本文重点探讨了RAROC的内涵与实质,从银行实务应用的角度提出不同管理目的下的实用RAROC计量模型。同时针对模型测算中面临的数据提取、匹配、分摊等问题进行了研究,指出实用的计量模型、完备的基础数据库和业务部门支持是RAROC系统建设的三大关键要素,并给出系统构建的相关建议。     

Can We Prove a Bank Guilty of Creating Systemic Risk? A Minority Report

Because increasing a bank's capital requirement to improve the stability of the financial system imposes costs upon the bank, a regulator should ideally be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that banks classified as systemically risky really do create systemic risk before subjecting them to this capital punishment. Evaluating the performance of two leading systemic risk models, we show that estimation error alone prevents the reliable identification of the most systemically risky banks. We conclude that it will be a considerable challenge to develop a riskometer that is sound and reliable enough to provide an adequate foundation for macroprudential policy.     

Portfolio and financing adjustments for U.S. banks: Some empirical evidence

This paper presents a model of the portfolio and financing adjustments of U.S. banks over the business cycle. At the core of the model is a moral hazard problem between depositors/bank regulators and stockholders. The solution to this problem takes the form of shared management of the bank. Stockholders manage the bank's portfolio and the regulator manages the financing of the portfolio. The model predicts that portfolio adjustments are made to conform to the risk aversion of shareholders and financing adjustments are made to offset changes in portfolio risk. Regression evidence for 1955–2000 fails to reject these predictions.     

Aligning Incentives at Systemically Important Financial Institutions: A Proposal by the Squam Lake Group

To address the moral hazard problem that can motivate bank executives to take excessive risks and to fail to raise capital when needed, a group of 13 distinguished financial economists recommends that systemically important financial institutions be required to issue contingent convertible debt (CoCos) and to hold back a substantial share—as much as 20%—of the compensation of employees who can have a meaningful impact on the survival of the firm. This holdback should be forfeited if the firm's capital ratio falls below a specified threshold. The deferral period should be long enough—the authors suggest five years—to allow much of the uncertainty about managers' activities to be resolved before the bonds mature. Except for forfeiture, the payoff on the bonds should not depend on the firm's performance, nor should managers be permitted to hedge the risk of forfeiture. The threshold for forfeiture should be crossed well before a firm violates its regulatory capital requirements and well before its contingent convertible securities convert into equity. The Swiss Bank UBS has paid bonuses to its top 6,500 executives that have been structured in exactly this way. Management forfeits its deferred compensation if the bank's regulatory capital ratio falls below 7.5%, and its contingent convertible debt is set up to convert into equity if the bank's capital ratio falls below 5%.     

Bank capital and equity investment regulations

This paper uses an intermediation model to study the efficiency and welfare implications of both banks' minimum required capital–asset ratio and the regulation that limits, and in some countries forbids, banks' investments in the equity of nonfinancial firms. There are two sources of moral hazard in the model: one between the bank and the provider of deposit insurance, and the other between the bank and an entrepreneur who demands funds to finance an investment project. Among other things, the paper shows that capital regulation improves the bank's stability and can also be Pareto-improving. Equity regulation is never Pareto-improving and does not increase the bank's stability.     

Capital Requirements,Monetary Policy,and Aggregate Bank Lending: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Capital requirements linked solely to credit risk are shown to increase equilibrium credit rationing and lower aggregate lending. The model predicts that the bank's decision to lend will cause an abnormal runup in the borrower's stock price and that this reaction will be greater the more capital-constrained the bank. I provide empirical support for this prediction. The model explains the recent inability of the Federal Reserve to stimulate bank lending by increasing the money supply. I show that increasing the money supply can either raise or lower lending when capital requirements are linked only to credit risk.