The prediction of bank acquisition targets with discriminant and logit analyses: Methodological issues and empirical evidence

This paper uses discriminant and logit analyses to develop prediction models to identify bank acquisition targets. We consider several methodological issues, such as whether the choice of the estimation technique, the selection of variables, the use of raw versus industry relative data, the train-and-test sampling scheme, and the criteria for model evaluation affect the predictive accuracy of the developed models. Both estimation methods generate remarkably similar model performance rankings, while differences are revealed in the relative importance of variables when using raw versus industry relative data. We find that in most cases there is a fair amount of misclassification, consistent with previous studies in non-financial sectors, which is hard to avoid given the nature of the problem.     

What Drives Acquisitions in the EU Banking Industry? The Role of Bank Regulation and Supervision Framework,Bank Specific and Market Specific Factors

We investigate the determinants of commercial bank acquisitions in the former fifteen countries of the European Union by evaluating the impact of bank‐specific measures, such as size, growth and efficiency of banks, and external influences reflecting industry level differences in the regulatory and supervision framework, market environment and economic conditions. Our empirical analysis involves multinomial logit estimation at various levels in order to identify those characteristics that most consistently predict targets and acquirers from a sample of over 1400 commercial banks. The overall results indicate that, relative to banks that were not involved in the acquisitions, (i) targets and acquirers were significantly larger, less well capitalized and less cost efficient, (ii) targets were less profitable with lower growth prospects, and acquirers more profitable with higher growth prospects, (iii) external factors have affected targets and acquirers differently, and their effects have not been consistent or robust to sample size changes.     

Foreign ownership and productivity in Chinese newly listed firms: the moderating roles of founder’s human capital and social ties

This paper studies the effects of foreign ownership on firm-level productivity and examines the different moderating roles of the firm-founder’s human capital and social ties on the foreign ownership - productivity link. Leveraging a unique sample of 428 small and medium-sized firms listed on the Growth Enterprise Market in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange between 2009 and 2016, we find that the foreign ownership’s contribution to productivity is not linear and varies across different quantiles of the productivity distribution. Our findings also show that the founder’s education and foreign experience strengthen the foreign ownership - productivity link, while the founder’s political and managerial ties weaken it. Our results reveal the strategic importance of the founder and contribute to an improved understanding of why firms vary in their ability to enhance productivity in emerging economies.

     

The identification of acquisition targets in the EU banking industry: An application of multicriteria approaches

In this paper we develop classification models for the identification of acquisition targets in the EU banking industry, incorporating financial variables that are mostly unique to the banking industry and originate from the CAMEL approach. A sample of 168 non-acquired banks matched with 168 acquired banks is used over the period 1998-2002, covering 15 EU countries. We compare and evaluate the relative efficiency of three multicriteria approaches, namely MHDIS, PAIRCLAS, and UTADIS, with all models developed and tested using a 10-fold cross validation approach. We find that the importance of the variables differs across the models. However, on the basis of univariate test and the results of the models we could state that in general after adjusting for the country where banks operate, acquired banks are less well capitalized and less cost and profit efficient. The results show that the developed models can achieve higher classification accuracies than a naïve model based on random assignments. Nevertheless, there is fair amount of misclassification that is hard to avoid given the nature of the problem, showing that as in previous studies for non-financial firms, the identification of acquisitions targets in banking is a difficult task.     

The Effect of Board Size and Composition on the Efficiency of UK Banks

We examine a sample of 17 banking institutions operating in the UK between 2001 and 2006 to provide empirical evidence on the association between the efficiency of UK banks and board structure, namely board size and composition. Our approach is to use data envelopment analysis to estimate several measures of the efficiency of banks, and then to use panel data regressions for investigating the impact of board structure on efficiency. After controlling for bank size and capital strength, we find some evidence of a positive association between board size and efficiency, although this is not robust across all our specifications. Board composition, by contrast, has a robustly significant and positive impact on all measures of efficiency.     

The impact of banking regulations on banks' cost and profit efficiency: Cross-country evidence

This paper uses stochastic frontier analysis to provide international evidence on the impact of the regulatory and supervision framework on bank efficiency. Our dataset consists of 2853 observations from 615 publicly quoted commercial banks operating in 74 countries during the period 2000-2004. We investigate the impact of regulations related to the three pillars of Basel II (i.e. capital adequacy requirements, official supervisory power, and market discipline mechanisms), as well as restrictions on bank activities, on cost and profit efficiency of banks, while controlling for other country-specific characteristics. Our results suggest that banking regulations that enhance market discipline and empower the supervisory power of the authorities increase both cost and profit efficiency of banks. In contrast, stricter capital requirements improve cost efficiency but reduce profit efficiency, while restrictions on bank activities have the opposite effect, reducing cost efficiency but improving profit efficiency.