Can an Asia Pacific Community,similar to the European Community,emerge?

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the Asia Pacific region could form a union similar to the one now established in Europe. To this end, it analyses some of the major challenge faced by the US prior to its union in the 19th century and the way countries such as France and Germany contributed to the formation of the EU, despite their past animosity. The paper proposed a two tier system for the emergence of a union in the Asia Pacific region in which all countries could become part of a regional framework for regional security and free trade and some of the more advanced countries in the region could start the process of financial integration and invite other member countries to join them over time. The paper argues that in the 2st century, unlike the claim of the “currency optimum theory,” there is no need for labour mobility amongst Asian countries for the formation of a union in this region and hence Australia should not expect millions of workers from China to migrate there. The paper argues that the role of Japan and China in the process of regional integration has been underestimated, due to the claim that the former is a monoculture and the latter is too nationalistic. The paper highlights how diversity in the region could be seen as a strength in the Asia Pacific region. It also shows how the process of globalisation has already overcome differences in culture, religion and race which used to be stumbling blocks for more regional or global integration. The paper argues that a union in the Asia Pacific region would reduce “home bias” for international capital flows and hence there would be significant financial transformation of countries in this region.     

Are two heads better than one? Evidence from the thrift crisis

We employ a natural experiment from the 1980s, predating the ubiquitous clamor for independence influenced corporate governance structures, to examine which governance mechanisms are associated with firm survival and failure. We find that thrifts were more likely to survive the thrift crisis when their CEO also chaired the firm’s board of directors. On average, chair-holding CEOs undertook less aggressive lending policies than their counterparts who did not chair their boards. Consequently, taxpayer interests were protected by thrifts that bestowed both leadership posts to one person. This is an important policy issue, because taxpayers become the residual claimants for depository institutions that fail as a result of managers adopting risky strategies to exploit underpriced deposit insurance. Our findings corroborate recent evidence that manager-dominated firms resist shareholder pressure to adopt riskier investment strategies to exploit underpriced deposit insurance.     

Firm values and sovereign wealth fund investments

We analyze the impact of sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investments on firm values and provide evidence consistent with the tradeoff between the monitoring and lobbying benefits versus tunneling and expropriation costs of SWFs as blockholders. The data show significant positive (negative) returns to announcements of SWF investments (divestments). The returns are non-monotonic, first rising (falling) and then falling (rising) with the share sought (sold) for investments (divestments). Moreover, we find that SWFs are often active investors. Slightly more than half of the target firms experience one or more events indicative of SWF monitoring activity or influence.     

Will the U.S. bank recapitalization succeed? Eight lessons from Japan

During the financial crisis that started in 2007, the U.S. government has used a variety of tools to try to rehabilitate the U.S. banking industry. Many of those strategies were also used in Japan to combat its banking problems in the 1990s. There are also a surprising number of other similarities between the current U.S. crisis and the recent Japanese crisis. The Japanese policies were only partially successful in recapitalizing the banks until the economy finally started to recover in 2003. From these unsuccessful attempts, we derive eight lessons. In light of these eight lessons, we assess the policies the U.S. has pursued. The U.S. has ignored three of the lessons and it is too early to evaluate the U.S. policies with respect to four of the others. So far, the U.S. has avoided Japan's problem of having impaired banks prop up zombie firms.     

Does deregulation induce competition in the market for corporate control? The special case of banking

Using a sample of 936 acquisitions of commercial banks, we examine the relation between the probability to engage in value-reducing acquisitions and corporate governance structures, as well as the relation between acquirer announcement-period abnormal stock returns and antitakeover indices and measures, and how these relations were affected by the change in the market for corporate control, caused by deregulation due to the implementation of the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 and the Financial Service Modernization Act of 1999. We find that prior to deregulation there is no relation between probability to engage in value destroying acquisitions or acquirer returns and antitakeover indices, whereas after the adoption of the FSMA, probability to engage in value destroying acquisitions and the stock market reaction to bidder M&A announcements are both significantly related to governance indexes and measures. Our findings further confirm the linkage between the market for corporate control, antitakeover indices and firm value.     

Strong boards,CEO power and bank risk-taking

This study examines the relevance of bank board structure on bank risk-taking. Using a sample of 212 large US bank holding companies over 1997–2004 (1534 observations), this study finds that strong bank boards (boards reflecting more of bank shareholders interest) particularly small and less restrictive boards positively affect bank risk-taking. In contrast, CEO power (CEO’s ability to control board decision) negatively affects bank risk-taking. These results are consistent with the bank contracting environment and robust to several proxies for bank risk-takings and different estimation techniques.     

Does board structure in banks really affect their performance?

We study whether board structure (board size, independence and gender diversity) in banks relates to performance. Using a broad panel of large US bank holding companies over the period 1997–2011, we find that both board size and independent directors decrease bank performance. Although gender diversity improves bank performance in the pre-Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) period (1997–2002), the positive effect of gender diminishes in both the post-SOX (2003–2006) and the crisis periods (2007–2011). Finally, we show that board structure is particularly relevant for banks with low market power, if they are immune to the threat of external takeover and/or they are small. Our two-step system generalised method of moments estimation accounts for endogeneity concerns (simultaneity, reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity). The findings are robust to a wide range of other sensitivity checks including alternative proxies for bank performance.     

The relationship between corporate governance and foreign ownership of the banks in developing countries

The aim of this paper is to determine the effect of corporate governance on foreign ownership of the banks. Within this context, annual data of 65 developing countries for the periods between 2004 and 2013 was analyzed. In addition to this situation, 7 explanatory variables were used in this study in order to achieve this objective. As a result of the analysis, it was identified that there is a strong relationship between operations of foreign banks and governance levels of the countries. In this regard, it was determined that the factors of corruption, political stability, rule of law and flexibility in legal regulations affect foreign bank operations. Moreover, it was also analyzed that foreign bank operations are stronger in the countries that have low poverty, high political stability and efficient legal infrastructure. On the other hand, it was defined that strict legal regulation affects foreign bank operations negatively which shows that foreign banks prefer to enter into the countries that have flexible legal regulations. This study gives essential information to developing countries about the factors that affect the decisions of foreign banks in order to enter into a developing country. Therefore, by considering the results of this study, the authorities of these countries can have a chance to take necessary actions so as to attract foreign banks.     

The effect of changes in ownership structure on performance: Evidence from the thrift industry

Restrictions on stock ownership may harm a company's performance, because restrictions prevent owners from choosing an optimal structure. We examine the stock-price performance and ownership structure of a sample of thrift institutions that converted from mutual to stock ownership. We find that after conversion and the expiration of ownership-structure restrictions, firm performance improves significantly, and the portions of the firm owned by managers and the firm's employee stock ownership plan increase. Changes in performance are positively associated with changes in ownership by managers, but negatively associated with changes in ownership by employee stock ownership plans.     

Market crises and Basel capital requirements: Could Basel III have been different? Evidence from Portugal,Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIGS)

Basel III represents a crucial step in strengthening the capital rules underlying banking operations, aimed at reducing the probability and severity of a systemic crisis. Alongside two supplementary capital buffers, the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision imposed severe pressure on the Value-at-Risk based Internal Models Approach in order to increase. This is to increase the capital base by adding the stressed Value-at-Risk component in an effort to reduce reliance on internal models while keeping the Standardized Approach avenue open. However, even though those measures might appear theoretically correct, evidence gathered for long and short exposures in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain highlights several defects in Basel III. We emphasize that leptokurtic models, primarily those derived from Extreme Value Theory, should be enforced in the regulations given their superior performance in market crises, and that Basel II could have shielded against 2008 mayhem provided that heavy-tailed techniques had been employed.     

Too big to fail: Some empirical evidence on the causes and consequences of public banking interventions in the UK

During the 2007–09 financial crisis, the banking sector received an extraordinary level of public support. In this empirical paper, we examine the determinants of a number of public sector interventions: government funding or central bank liquidity insurance schemes, public capital injections, and nationalizations. We use bank-level data spanning all British and foreign banks operating within the United Kingdom. We use multinomial logit regression techniques and find that a bank's size, relative to the size of the entire banking system, typically has a large positive and non-linear effect on the probability of public sector intervention for a bank. We also use instrumental variable techniques to show that British interventions helped; there is fragile evidence that the wholesale (non-core) funding of an affected institution increased significantly following capital injection or nationalization.     

Exploring governance of the new European Banking Authority—A case for harmonization?

In the context of the proposed EU financial supervisory reforms, this paper focuses on the governance of the network of national supervisory banking agencies and the newly established Community supervisor (European Banking Authority, EBA). We assess to what extent lack of governance convergence nationally and with EBA could undermine the incentives for cooperation among supervisors. Convergence should particularly focus on (i) the issue of the presence of politicians on decision-making bodies; (ii) the need for clearly defining dismissal procedures of heads of supervision; (iii) autonomy from government in regulatory matters; (iv) supervisory autonomy in matters of licensing and withdrawing licenses; (iv) mechanisms for judicial accountability; (v) legal protection for supervisors handling in good faith. In the absence of full centralization of prudential supervision, early harmonization of national governance arrangements towards best practice would better align supervisors’ incentive structures and, hence, be beneficial for the effectiveness of European supervision.     

Financial supervision regimes and bank efficiency: International evidence

There exists a lively debate as for the appropriate architecture of the financial supervision regime, with a long list of theoretical advantages and disadvantages associated with each one of its key dimensions. The present study investigates whether and how bank profit efficiency is influenced by the central bank’s involvement in financial supervision, the unification of financial authorities, and the independence of the central bank. The results show that efficiency decreases as the number of the financial sectors that are supervised by the central bank increases. Additionally, banks operating in countries with greater unification of supervisory authorities are less profit efficient. Finally, central bank independence has a negative impact on bank profit efficiency.     

Can subordinated debt constrain banks’ risk taking?

This paper presents a model in which requiring banks to issue a proper amount of subordinated debt can constrain their risk taking both before and after debt issuance. The main idea is that the prospect of issuing debt motivates banks to invest in safe assets before debt issuance; holding such assets then constrains their risk taking after debt issuance. The model helps understand the existing empirical findings, and offers a new testable prediction. It also suggests that: (1) regulators should set the amount of subordinated debt within a range; and (2) subordinated debt cannot entirely substitute for equity capital.     

The effects of reform on China’s bank structure and performance

This paper investigates the relationship between market structure and performance in China’s banking system from 1985 to 2002, a period when this sector was subject to gradual but notable reform. Using panel data estimation techniques, both the market-power and efficient-structure hypotheses are tested. In addition, the model is extended to consider issues such as the impact of bank size/ownership and whether the big four banks enjoy a “quiet life”. On average, X-efficiency declined significantly and most banks were operating below scale efficient levels. Estimation of the structure–performance models lends some support to the relative market-power hypothesis in the early period. The reforms had little impact on the structure of China’s banking sector, though the “joint stock” banks became relatively more X-efficient. There was no evidence to support the quiet-life hypothesis, probably because strict interest rate controls prevented the state banks from earning monopoly profits. Thus the ongoing liberalisation of interest rates should be accompanied by reduced concentration. Overall, to improve competitive structure, new policies should be directed at encouraging market entry and increasing the market share of the most efficient banks.