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.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LEGAL SEGREGATION: JIM CROW AND RACIAL EMPLOYMENT PATTERNS

Legal segregation was a fact of life for blacks in the American South during the first half of the present century. These laws are sometimes compared to South African apartheid . However, there seems to be one important difference: Jim Crow, unlike apartheid , did not directly hamper the ability of blacks to compete with whites in labor markets. Our paper explores this problem. We report evidence which suggests that, in spite of the absence of direct labor market restrictions confronting blacks subject to Jim Crow, these laws nevertheless reduced the ability of blacks to compete with whites for jobs.     

ANNOUNCEMENT EFFECTS OF WITHDRAWN SECURITY OFFERINGS: EVIDENCE ON THE WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION HYPOTHESIS

This paper employs the comparison period returns approach to examine issuance and withdrawal announcement effects for stock portfolios of firms announcing equity or debt issues that are subsequently withdrawn. In contrast to previous literature, which generally attributes financing announcement effects to capital structure changes, the conclusion of this paper is that security price changes at the time an issue is announced or withdrawn prevent wealth redistributions between insiders and outsiders. Empirical findings are inconsistent with the interpretation of announcement effects as capital structure effects.     

INFLUENCE OF TREASURY BILL FUTURES TRADING ON THE PRIMARY SALE OF THE DELIVERABLE TREASURY BILL

This paper investigates the impact of the presence of Treasury bill (T-bill) futures market contracts on the primary auction price of deliverable T-bills. Of the 52 weekly three- and six-month T-bill auctions, only four are deliverable against the T-bill futures market contract. This unique ability to deliver may command a premium price in the primary market. The results of this study support this hypothesis with regard to the six-month auction but are inconclusive with regard to the three-month auction. Furthermore, there is some evidence that the 1983 rule change making the one-year T-bill a deliverable instrument reduced the size of the premium in the six-month bill auction.