Are real estate specializing depositories viable? Evidence from commercial banks

This study investigates whether depository institutions that concentrate on real estate lending are economically viable by examining the behavior of a sample of commercial banks that chose over the last decade to specialize in real estate lending. The results show that over the 1978–1988 period, the average real estate specializing bank earnings performance was on par with regular commercial banks, and those that were in the business for a longer period of time had higher returns with less risk than substantially more diversified commercial banks. Real estate banks has relatively lower loan losses and relatively higher proportions of lower risk, one- to four-family mortgage loans than regular commercial banks. Finally, it appears that real estate banks exhibited substantial flexibility in their ability to adjust their real estate loan holdings.     

The sensitivity of bank stock returns to real estate

According to the Federal Reserve Board, banking firms have recently been shifting significantly larger portions of their loan portfolios into real estate. This increase in real estate lending has caused concern about the continuing economic health of banks on the part of state and federal regulators, since changes in real estate returns, evidenced by changes in property value, can potentially have a significant impact on bank default risk and profit-ability. However, concerned parties do not seem to have explicitly considered the relationship between mortgage default risk and the specific characteristics of real estate investments.This study examines the sensitivities of stock returns for different bank groups, based on the percentage of total loans in real estate and the percentage of loans in five different mortgage categories (construction and development loans, farmland loans, one- to four-family residential loans, multifamily residential loans, and nonresidential and nonfarm loans), to changes in real estate market returns. This is done by developing and using a three-index model.The results of this study indicate that bank stocks, overall, are very sensitive to changes in real estae returns. Banks, with a larger portion of their total loans invested in all types of real estate loans, except farmland loans, are most sensitive to changes in real estate returns.     

Liquidity crisis,relationship lending and corporate finance

This paper investigates the consequences of the liquidity shocks in wholesale funding markets during the 2007–2009 financial crisis on bank lending and corporate financing. We show that banks that relied more heavily on wholesale funding contracted lending more severely than banks that relied more on insured deposits. We then examine the effects of loan contraction on the financial positions of publicly traded firms. We find that both during and after the crisis, the change in leverage of bank-dependent firms is less than that of firms with access to public debt markets. In addition, bank-dependent firms rely more on cash than net equity issuance to finance operations. We also find that firms with established bank lending relationships weather the crisis better. Such firms are able to attain higher levels of leverage during the crisis, add to their cash holdings, secure new bank credit, and achieve higher profitability as a result.     

Extreme risk spillover network: application to financial institutions

Using the CAViaR tool to estimate the value-at-risk (VaR) and the Granger causality risk test to quantify extreme risk spillovers, we propose an extreme risk spillover network for analysing the interconnectedness across financial institutions. We construct extreme risk spillover networks at 1% and 5% risk levels (which we denote 1% and 5% VaR networks) based on the daily returns of 84 publicly listed financial institutions from four sectors—banks, diversified financials, insurance and real estate—during the period 2006–2015. We find that extreme risk spillover networks have a time-lag effect. Both the static and dynamic networks show that on average the real estate and bank sectors are net senders of extreme risk spillovers and the insurance and diversified financials sectors are net recipients, which coheres with the evidence from the recent global financial crisis. The networks during the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis exhibited distinctive topological features that differed from those in tranquil periods. Our approach supplies new information on the interconnectedness across financial agents that will prove valuable not only to investors and hedge fund managers, but also to regulators and policy-makers.     

The long-term effects of bank recapitalization: Evidence from Indonesia

Do government-sponsored bank recapitalization programs spur lending and reduce risk? This paper assesses the impact of Indonesia’s bank recapitalization program on lending and bank risk following the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Using unique bank-level data, difference-in-differences estimates suggest that recapitalization increased lending (and more so for larger banks), but also boosted bank risk in the long term. Results remain robust to considerations of (1) bank-level differences in political connections, business group affiliation, ownership type, and (2) changes in macroeconomic conditions, capital requirements, accounting regulations, and public credit registry availability.     

Does the source of debt financing affect default risk?

We examine whether the source of debt financing is important for assessments of firms’ default risk. This study reveals that during the 2007–2010 financial crisis, firms that depend mainly on financing from banks suffer higher increases in default risk than do firms with no such dependence. Conversely, firms that rely solely on financing from public debt markets do not experience significant increases in default risk. These findings suggest that the bank supply shock theory explains the transmission of financial shocks to the real economy. Finally, firms that depend on bank financing cannot offset the adverse impacts of bank lending shocks by substituting bank loans with publicly traded debt.     

The impact of state ownership on performance differences in privately-owned versus state-owned banks: An international comparison

This paper examines how government ownership and government involvement in a country’s banking system affect bank performance from 1989 through 2004. Our study uncovers an interesting pattern of changing performance differences between state-owned and privately-owned banks around the Asian financial crisis. We find that state-owned banks operated less profitably, held less core capital, and had greater credit risk than privately-owned banks prior to 2001, and the performance differences are more significant in those countries with greater government involvement and political corruption in the banking system. In addition, from 1997 to 2000, the 4-year period after the beginning of the Asian financial crisis, the deterioration in the cash flow returns, core capital, and credit quality of state-owned banks was significantly greater than that of privately-owned banks, especially for the countries that were hardest hit by the Asian crisis. However, state-owned banks closed the gap with privately-owned banks on cash flow returns, core capital, and nonperforming loans in the post-crisis period of 2001–2004. Our findings can best be explained by Shleifer and Vishny’s [Shleifer, A., Vishny, R.W., 1997. A survey of corporate governance. J. Finance 52, 737–783] corporate governance theory on state ownership of firms and Kane’s [Kane, E.J., 2000. Capital movement, banking insolvency, and silent runs in the Asian financial crisis. Pacific-Basin Finance J. 8, 153–175] life-cycle model of a regulation-induced banking crisis.     

Firms’ financial and real responses to credit supply shocks: Evidence from firm-bank relationships in Germany

We investigate the importance of firm-bank relationships for the international transmission of bank distress to the real economy. Using a large panel of matched financial statements of firms of all sizes and their relationship banks in Germany, we find that banks with losses from proprietary trading activities during the 2007/8 financial crisis decreased their lending, and that their firm customers responded by reducing real investment and employment. We document how different types of firms partially offset reduced credit supply by resorting to alternative financing sources.     

Debt-overhang banking crises: Detecting and preventing systemic risk

This paper shows how the debt-overhang distortion on bank lending can generate a self-fulfilling-expectations banking crisis accompanied by a plunge in the value of banks’ assets and a contraction of bank lending and economic activity. Moral hazard in banking adds an additional channel that can generate multiple equilibria, worsen the debt-overhang distortion, and deepen the crisis. Some signals of systemic risk include: high volatility and the presence of two modes in the probability distribution functions of the returns on bank-issued bonds and on portfolios of bank-issued bonds and equities; and high correlation between the returns on bank-issued bonds. Macroprudential regulation should discourage the exposure of banks to the economic and financial cycle by raising the capital requirements for banks with more cyclical assets.     

Bank Heterogeneity and Interest Rate Setting: What Lessons Have We Learned since Lehman Brothers?

A substantial literature has investigated the role of relationship lending in shielding borrowers from idiosyncratic shocks. Much less is known about how lending relationships and bank‐specific characteristics affect the functioning of the credit market in an economy‐wide crisis. We investigate how bank and bank–firm relationship characteristics have influenced interest rate setting since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. We find that interest rate spreads increased by less for those borrowers having closer lending relationships. Furthermore, firms borrowing from banks endowed with large capital and liquidity buffers and from banks engaged mainly in traditional lending were kept more insulated from the financial crisis.     

Realized bank risk during the great recession

We find that certain bank characteristics—aggressive credit growth, less reliance on deposit funding, and size—prior to the 2007−2009 crisis are consistently related to the systemic dimensions of bank risk during the crisis. Exposures to real estate play a major role explaining this relationship: Banks with larger real estate betas exhibited higher levels of systemic risk during the crisis. The impact of real estate betas on systemic risk increases for larger banks, following aggressive credit growth policies in the presence of housing bubbles. We show that the relationship between bank characteristics and risk could also be detected using measures of systemic risk calculated prior to the financial crisis.     

Ownership,evergreening and crisis: an analysis of bank–firm relationships in India

Employing data on publicly listed firms for 1995–2012, the article examines the behaviour of bank lending and interest cost and how it evolved during the crisis. The evidence suggests that high-Non-performing Loans (NPL) main banks raised their lending and lowered lending rates during the crisis, especially to risky, low-profit firms, indicative of a flight from quality. A disaggregation of the possible reasons for the flight from quality provides evidence in favour of short-termism behaviour by banks. The analysis also provides evidence in support of tunnelling by risky firms, which became amplified during the crisis. The net effect of these developments was a perceptible reduction in overall employment.     

Relationship Lending, Accounting Disclosure, and Credit Availability during the Asian Financial Crisis

We examine whether lending relationships benefit firms by making credit more available during periods of financial stress. Our main finding is that during the Asian financial crisis of July 1997 through the end of 1998, relationship lending increased the likelihood that Korean and Thai firms would obtain credit but it had no effect on Indonesian and Philippine firms. We ask if accounting disclosure might explain the observed differences among the three countries for which audit information is available. We find that for Indonesian firms with weak lending relationships, banks replace relationship lending technology with a financial-statement lending technology. Such a result does not hold for Korean and Philippine firms.     

Bank incentives and suboptimal lending decisions: Evidence from the valuation effect of bank loan announcements in Japan

Using a sample of bank loan announcements in Japan, we examine whether or not banks have incentives to engage in suboptimal lending that results in wealth transfer from the banks to the borrowing firms. We find that abnormal returns for borrowing firms are significantly positive, but those for lending banks are sometimes significantly negative. Furthermore, the announcement returns for borrowing firms are negatively related to those for lending banks, especially when poorly performing firms borrow from financially healthy (low-risk) banks. Our results suggest that the positive valuation effect of bank loan announcements for borrowing firms is mainly due to a wealth transfer from lending banks.     

The effect of financial market development on bank risk: evidence from Southeast Asian countries

This paper examines how bank risk varies with changes in financial markets development in a broad data set of 52 publicly listed commercial banks in five Southeast Asian countries over a 23-year period between 1990 and 2012. A consequence of two financial crises (i.e. the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 and the global financial crisis of 2007–2009) provides a natural experiment in which linkages between financial markets development and bank risk are measured. Empirical results show that higher degrees of financial markets development are associated with weaker bank capital positions and are positively related to higher degrees of bank revenue diversification. There is also evidence for a U-shaped relationship between the degree of financial markets development and bank capital.     

Bank risk,competition and bank connectedness with firms: A literature review

The outbreak of the 2007–2009 financial crisis and of the European sovereign debt crisis again raised questions about the vulnerability and the behaviour of banking institutions. The unconventional monetary policies that followed have flattened the yield curve and created a low interest rates environment. This can give rise to risk-taking behaviour from banks and can therefore undermine the stability of the banking system with negative impact of the credit supply, corporate investment and real economy. This article proposes a literature review on the main determinants of bank lending and risk-taking decisions, going through the competition in the banking market, the bank connectedness with firms and the role of monetary and banking authorities. The systemic risk concept is also discussed as well as its drivers and potential measures that should be monitored by prudential authorities in order to preserve financial stability.     

Political interference and crowding out in bank lending

I provide novel evidence on the real costs of political interference in bank lending. Analyzing staggered state elections in India, I show that politically motivated increased bank lending to farmers before elections crowds out lending to manufacturing firms. These lending distortions are larger where farmers have more political weight and where incumbents have more influence over banks. Reduced bank credit forces manufacturing firms to cut production and operate at lower factor utilization. I also provide evidence suggesting politically motivated increased agricultural lending before state elections contributed towards excessive indebtedness of farmers and a subsequent costly bailout in 2008.     

The effect of TARP on bank risk-taking

One of the largest responses of the US government to the recent financial crisis was the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP was originally intended to stabilize the financial sector through the increased capitalization of banks. However, recipients of TARP funds were then encouraged to make additional loans despite increased borrower risk. In this paper, we consider the effect of the TARP capital injections on bank risk-taking by analyzing the risk ratings of banks’ commercial loan originations during the crisis. The results indicate that, relative to non-TARP banks, the risk of loan originations increased at large TARP banks but decreased at small TARP banks. Loan levels also moved in different directions for large and small banks and, in supporting evidence, these effects are evaluated based on loan size and TARP repayment. For large banks, the increase in risk-taking without an increase in lending is suggestive of moral hazard due to government support. These results may also be due to the conflicting goals of the TARP program for bank recapitalization and bank lending.     

Measuring Integrated Market and Credit Risk in Bank Portfolios: An Application to a Set of Hypothetical Banks Operating in South Africa

The banking crises of the ‘90s emphasize the need to model the connections between financial environment volatility and the potential losses faced by financial institutions resulting from correlated market and credit risks. Due to the number of variables that must be modeled and the complexity of the relationships an analytical solution is not feasible. We present here a numerical solution based on a simulation model that explicitly links changes in the relevant variables that characterize the financial environment and the distribution of possible future bank capital ratios. This forward looking quantitative risk assessment methodology allows banks and regulators to identify potential risks before they materialize and make appropriate adjustments to bank portfolio credit qualities, sector and region concentrations, and capital ratios on a bank by bank basis. It also has the potential to be extended so as to assess the risks of correlated failures among a group of financial institutions (i.e., systemic risk analyses). This model was applied by the authors to the study of the risk profile of the largest South African Banks in the context of the Financial System Stability Assessment program undertaken by the IMF in 1999. In the current study, we apply the model to various hypothetical banks operating in the South African financial environment and assess the correlated market and credit risks associated with business lending, mortgage lending, asset and liability maturity matches, foreign lending and borrowing, and direct equity, real estate, and gold investments. It is shown to produce simulated financial environments (interest rates, exchange rates, equity indices, real estate price indices, commodity prices, and economic indicators) that match closely the assumed parameters, and generate reasonable credit transition probabilities and security prices. As expected, the credit quality and diversification characteristics of the loan portfolio, asset and liability maturity mismatches, and financial environment volatility, are shown to interact to determine bank risk levels. We find that the credit quality of a bank's loan portfolio is the most important risk factor. We also show the risk reduction benefits of diversifying the loan portfolio across various sectors and regions of the economy and the importance of accounting for volatility shocks that occur periodically in emerging economies. Banks with high credit risk and concentrated portfolios are shown to have a high risk of failure during periods of financial stress. Alternatively, banks with lower credit risk and broadly diversified loan portfolios across business and mortgage lending are unlikely to fail even during very volatile periods. Asset and liability maturity mismatches generally increase bank risk levels. However, because credit losses are positively correlated with interest rate increases, banks with high credit risk may reduce overall risk levels by holding liabilities with longer maturities than their assets. Risk assessment methodologies which measure market and credit risk separately do not capture these various interactions and thus misestimate overall risk levels.     

Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans

Using a data set that records banks’ ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to borrower credit risk, relationship length, collateral, and the provision of business tax returns, but in complex ways. The relation between borrower risk and financial statement requests has an inverted U‐shape; and tax returns can be both substitutes and complements to financial statements, conditional on borrower characteristics and the degree of bank–borrower information asymmetry. Frequent financial reporting is used to monitor collateral, but only for non–real estate loans and only when the collateral is easily accessible to lenders. Collectively, our results provide novel evidence of a fundamental information demand for financial reporting in monitoring small commercial borrowers and a specific channel through which banks fulfill their role as delegated monitors.