DETERMINANTS OF FINANCIAL DISTRESS IN LARGE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. BANK HOLDING COMPANIES

We investigate determinants of financial distress in large financial institutions based on the Distance‐to‐Default and Z‐Scores measures. Using data of U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs), we find that the housing price index is a consistently significant factor across all BHCs and the non‐performing loan ratio is the most powerful indicator for financial distress. Short‐term wholesale funding is also a reliable default risk indicator. We additionally find that all the three regulatory capital requirements are very important for controlling default risk, particularly in the post‐crisis period. (JEL C53, G14, G21, G28)     

Does corporate governance play an important role in BHC performance? Evidence from the U.S.

This study explores the relationship between the operating performance and corporate governance of bank holding companies (BHCs) in the U.S. The modified data envelopment analysis (DEA) is utilized to integrate the five rating indicators of CAMEL (Capital Adequacy, Asset Quality, Management, Earnings, and Liquidity) so as to estimate the BHCs' performance. This study also employs the modified tiered DEA to categorize 68 BHCs into three Tiers. Additionally, the truncated-regression is employed to discuss whether or not the corporate governance would affect the performance of BHCs. The empirical results present the trade-off relationship with CAMEL indicators in the Tier1—Efficient BHCs. Moreover, it has been found that there are negative impacts on BHC's performance from board size, outside directors, the average age of directors and CEO/Chairman duality, while there are positive impacts from the number of committee and Big-4 auditors. The results further prove that corporate governance is important for the operating performance of BHCs.     

Activity strategies,information asymmetry,and bank opacity

Using a large panel of US bank holding companies from 2001 to 2015, we investigate the association between functional diversification and bank earnings management. We document a positive relationship between bank earnings management and bank diversification. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that diversification increases the asymmetric information of banks, leading to greater discretionary power by bank managers. This effect is most prevalent in smaller banks and non-dividend paying banks. The impact of diversification on earnings management is less pronounced during the crisis. Our study is of interest to regulators and other stakeholders who examine factors which affect behavior of bank managers.     

The recourse rule,regulatory arbitrage,and the financial crisis

In November 2001, regulators finalized the “Recourse Rule.” The rule lowered risk weights, and therefore commercial bank holding company capital requirements, to 0.2 for holdings of AAA- and AA-rated “private label” securitization tranches, created by investment banks and securitizing commercial bank holding company subsidiaries; risk weights for A-rated holdings equaled 0.5. The rule’s aim was to encourage securitization, but not risk-taking. Regulators indicated that the rule would apply to larger holding companies, without identifying them. Using bank holding companies with subsidiaries that commented on the proposed rule-makings as a treatment variable, average treatment effects from a fully flexible difference-in-differences model indicate that treated banks increased their holdings of the highly rated tranches relative to total assets, while other holding companies, on average, did not. Holding companies with greater highly rated tranche holdings also experienced greater increases in risk after Q1 2008, which suggests that poor performance may have been unanticipated.     

Bank competition and the cost of debt: the role of state ownership and firm size

The argument on the puzzling relationship between bank competition and the cost of debt remains inconclusive as the effects of state ownership and firm size are intertwined. We find that bank competition is negatively associated with the cost of debt and observe that the negative effect of bank competition is stronger for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and weaker for large-sized enterprises. Our findings accord with the market power hypothesis. State ownership strengthens the negative impact of bank competition on the cost of debt, but firm size tends to weaken it. SOEs and large-sized enterprises are associated with a lower cost of debt compared to non-SOEs and small- and medium-sized enterprises, respectively.     

Explaining and forecasting bank loans. Good times and crisis

This article aims to develop a parsimonious model to explain and forecast bank loans to nonfinancial companies during calm periods as well as in situations of financial turmoil. It focuses on the French context, over a period including financial, banking and sovereign debt crises. Theoretical views and intuitions led us to gauge the marginal informational content of a large set of leading indicators in VAR and VECM models, and to investigate potential nonlinearity in credit dynamics. In accordance with firms and banks’ balance sheet effects, the growth rate of equity prices appears to be one of the most interesting leading indicator as well as a significant threshold variable for explaining regime switching. However, it appears difficult to accurately predict the right credit dynamics regimes. A simple VAR model finally performs better.     

银行往来关系与公司代理成本关系实证研究——基于中国民营上市公司的证据

针对公司代理成本问题,本文主要以中国民营上市公司为样本,通过银行负债比例和长期银行负债比例来衡量企业和银行的往来关系密切程度,实证研究银行往来关系与公司代理成本的关系。研究结果表明,与银行保持密切的往来关系有助于中国民营上市公司降低公司代理成本。     

Do internal markets influence bank failures?

Empirical studies analysing the determinants of bank failures ignore the role of bank holding company affiliation in these failures. In this article, we propose a new approach of estimating affiliated banks’ failures that incorporates holding companies’ role in failures. Our logit regression results show that the holding company’s features, especially internal flows, mattered on failures more than those of the banks during the sub-prime mortgage crisis.     

Pyramidal groups and debt

This paper suggests that debt should be raised by subsidiaries in order to exploit the limited liability of the holding company. However, when this behavior increases the cost of funds, the holding might prefer to raise debt to a point where it would also default when subsidiaries are insolvent.After accounting for standard controls, we find that holding companies in Italian pyramids have higher leverage than subsidiaries and that the cash-flow share of the entrepreneur in the subsidiary does not play a significant role. These findings are consistent with the implications of our model of group capital structure.     

银行负债、制度环境与控股股东代理成本

债权人对控股股东的制衡力量在学术界一直鲜有人关注。文章就企业的银行负债对控股股东代理成本的影响进行了理论分析与实证检验,在此基础上进一步检验了产权性质对二者关系的调节作用,以及内部治理机制和法律环境与银行负债的交互作用。利用中国A股房地产上市公司2003-2011年的面板数据,研究表明:企业的银行负债显著降低了控股股东代理成本;产权性质对二者关系具有调节作用,公司内部治理机制、法律环境与银行负债存在交互作用。文章所得出的研究结论既丰富了委托代理、资本结构等相关理论,又对银行与国有企业产权改革以及企业融资决策具有较强启示意义。     

Inside the bank lending channel

This paper tests cross-sectional differences in the effectiveness of the bank lending channel. The results, derived from a comprehensive sample of Italian banks, suggest that heterogeneity in the monetary policy pass-through exists. After a monetary tightening the decrease in lending is lower for well-capitalized banks that are perceived as less risky by the market and are better able to raise uninsured deposits. Liquid banks can protect their loan portfolio against monetary tightening simply by drawing down cash and securities. The presence of internal capital markets in bank holding companies also contributes to insulate monetary shocks. Bank size is never relevant.     

Derivatives holdings and market values of U.S. bank holding companies

We examine the impact of derivatives held by US bank holding companies on their market valuations over the period 2000 to 2010. By using bank-level data with detailed information on the notional amounts of derivative positions according to holding purposes and underlying asset types, our regression analyses provide three main findings. First, derivative instruments held for hedging rather than trading purposes contribute to enhancing market values. Second, the positive effects exhibit nonmonotonic patterns indicating that excessive amounts of derivatives holdings deteriorate market values. Third, interest rate derivatives are the main source of high valuations.     

Public debt indexation and denomination with an independent central bank

This paper examines the interaction between public debt management and the design of monetary institutions. The analysis shows that delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank is more effective in containing inflationary expectations than the use of foreign currency or inflation-indexed debt. If delegation of monetary policy is viable, the optimal policy is to issue nominal debt. This increases the sensitivity of taxes and output to unexpected inflation, thus minimizing the inflation needed to offset supply shocks. Evidence on central bank independence, debt composition and output variability suggests that the normative argument has some positive content.     

Central bank communication on fiscal policy

The issue of central bank communication on fiscal policy has so far received very little attention in the literature. This article aims to shed light on the determinants of central bank communication on fiscal policy by analysing the intensity of central banks’ fiscal communication for five central banks (the Federal Reserve, the ECB, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England and the Swedish Riksbank) over the period 1999–2011. The ECB communicates intensively on fiscal policies, in a normative way. The other central banks emphasise foreign fiscal developments, fiscal policy as input to forecasts, or the use of government debt instruments in monetary policy operations. The empirical analysis indicates that the financial crisis has overall increased the intensity of central bank communication on fiscal policy. The evolution of the government deficit ratio is a driver of the intensity of fiscal communication in the euro area, the US and Japan, and for Sweden since the start of the crisis, while in the UK its intensity is related to government debt developments as of the start of the crisis.     

Debt ownership structure and legal system: an international analysis

This paper is concerned with the ownership structure of corporate debt from an institutional perspective. An attempt is made to identify the factors affecting bank debt use from an international sample of companies from Austria, Germany, Japan, Belgium, France, Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden and the USA. The results show that bank debt depends both on factors specific to each company and on institutional features of each country. More exactly, it is found that bank loans are related to firm size, to the quality and risk of the projects, and to the collateral. It is also found that a number of legal-institutional factors are impacting on the source of firms’ debt, such as creditor protection, firm disclosure requirements and law enforcement.     

银行贷款对上市公司过度投资的治理效应

从金融深化程度和银企关系的角度,采用多元回归模型,以2003—2007年我国A股上市公司为研究对象,对我国银行贷款对过度投资的控制作用及其具体途径进行了理论和实证检验。研究结果表明:银行贷款(主要是短期贷款)对上市公司特别是低成长性上市公司的过度投资具有控制作用;短期贷款对银行持股上市公司的控制作用要强于对非银行持股上市公司的控制作用,并且短期贷款的控制作用随着金融水平的提高而增强。     

Central bank independence,fiscal deficits and currency union: Lessons from Africa

Can central bank independence (CBI) help to reduce fiscal balances? In this paper, we answer this question using novel measures of CBI based on the turnover rate of central bank governors (TOR) and the Garriga measure of legal independence for 30 African countries for the period 1990–2017. Our novel measures of CBI capture the degree of alliance between the fiscal authority and the monetary authority which can potentially lead to debt monetization and higher fiscal balances. Thus, we classify central bank governor changes into ally changes or non-ally changes; in addition to that, we decompose our full sample into CFA zone countries and non-CFA zone countries to capture the effect of currency union membership. Our results show that for CFA zone countries, central bank autonomy, when proxied by the turnover rate of central bank governors, is associated with a decrease in fiscal balances and replacing a central banker with a non-ally, is negatively and significantly associated with fiscal balances.     

Financial distress,bank debt restructurings,and layoffs

We develop a model of a financially distressed firm to analyze the implications of a bank debt restructuring when the operational characteristics of the firm's project for the post-distress period are endogenously determined as part of the workout. We establish a formal link between the debt restructuring and operational actions such as employee layoffs, and show how these actions are affected by the firm's capital structure, the ordering of absolute priorities, and the allocation of control rights and residual claims after reorganization. Finally, we discuss the implications of our analysis for the design of reorganization law.     

金融生态环境、外部审计与债务资本成本

通过构建金融生态环境、外部审计与债务资本成本之间的理论模型,并选取2008--2011年沪市A股共694家上市公司为研究样本进行实证研究。结果表明：良好的金融生态环境有助于增强外部审计的风险揭示功能,使企业获得较低的债务资本成本;被出具非标准审计意见的企业具有更高的债务融资成本;同时审计师的选择在一定程度上为企业的债务融资成本提供了质量保证。     

债务结构、政府干预与市场环境

使用2002—2005年上市公司的面板数据对上市公司负债融资结构的影响因素研究发现:除一些企业内部的具体因素影响了企业的债务结构外,企业外部环境因素也影响了企业的债务结构。尤其表现在,企业所处地区的政府干预越多,市场化程度越低,法治水平越差,银行债务占总负债的比例越高;企业所处地区的政府干预越少,市场化程度越高,法治水平越好,信用债务占总负债的比例越高。