21.03.2018 • 5/2018
What is holding back the banking union?
The European Commission wants to better regulate and monitor the European banking sector. In many EU Member States, however, the necessary directives are being implemented extremely slowly. Surprisingly, the reasons for this do not lie in politics and banking structures, but in the institutional framework conditions and existing regulations in the Member States, as argued by Michael Koetter, Thomas Krause and Lena Tonzer from the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
Michael Koetter
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Should Banks Diversify or Focus? Know Thyself: The Role of Abilities
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, A. Melih Küllü, Mingming Zhou
Economic Systems,
No. 1,
2018
Abstract
The paper investigates whether diversification/focus across assets, industries and borrowers affects bank performance when banks’ abilities (screening and monitoring) are considered. The initial results show that diversification (focus) at the asset, industry and borrower levels is expected to decrease (increase) returns. However, once banks’ screening and monitoring abilities are controlled for, the effect of diversification/focus either gets weaker or disappears. Further, in some cases, these abilities enhance banks’ long-run performance, but in others they prove to be costly, at least, in the short run. Thus, the level of monitoring and screening abilities should be taken into consideration in understanding, planning and implementing diversification/focus strategies.
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The Impact of Credit Default Swap Trading on Loan Syndication
Daniel Streitz
Review of Finance,
No. 1,
2016
Abstract
We analyze the impact of credit default swap (CDS) trading on bank syndication activity. Theoretically, the effect of CDS trading is ambiguous: on the one hand, CDS can improve risk-sharing and hence be a more flexible risk management tool than loan syndication; on the other hand, CDS trading can reduce bank monitoring incentives. We document that banks are less likely to syndicate loans and retain a larger loan fraction once CDS are actively traded on the borrower’s debt. We then discern the risk management and the moral hazard channel. We find no evidence that the reduced likelihood to syndicate loans is a result of increased moral hazard problems.
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Financial Incentives and Loan Officer Behavior: Multitasking and Allocation of Effort Under an Incomplete Contract
Patrick Behr, Alejandro H. Drexler, Reint E. Gropp, Andre Guettler
Abstract
In this paper we investigate the implications of providing loan officers with a compensation structure that rewards loan volume and penalizes poor performance versus a fixed wage unrelated to performance. We study detailed transaction information for more than 45,000 loans issued by 240 loan officers of a large commercial bank in Europe. We examine the three main activities that loan officers perform: monitoring, originating, and screening. We find that when the performance of their portfolio deteriorates, loan officers increase their effort to monitor existing borrowers, reduce loan origination, and approve a higher fraction of loan applications. These loans, however, are of above-average quality. Consistent with the theoretical literature on multitasking in incomplete contracts, we show that loan officers neglect activities that are not directly rewarded under the contract, but are in the interest of the bank. In addition, while the response by loan officers constitutes a rational response to a time allocation problem, their reaction to incentives appears myopic in other dimensions.
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Corporate Boards and Bank Loan Contracting
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Michael Koetter, Qiang Wu
Journal of Financial Research,
No. 4,
2012
Abstract
We investigate the role of corporate boards in bank loan contracting. We find that when corporate boards are more independent, both price and nonprice loan terms (e.g., interest rates, collateral, covenants, and performance-pricing provisions) are more favorable, and syndicated loans comprise more lenders. In addition, board size, audit committee structure, and other board characteristics influence bank loan prices. However, they do not consistently affect all nonprice loan terms except for audit committee independence. Our study provides strong evidence that banks recognize the benefits of board monitoring in mitigating information risk ex ante and controlling agency risk ex post, and they reward higher quality boards with more favorable loan contract terms.
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Bank Market Discipline
Reint E. Gropp, M. Schleicher
ECB Monthly Bulletin,
2005
Abstract
This article reviews the conceptual issues surrounding market discipline for banks and describes to what extent market discipline could complement supervisory activities. The potential of market discipline has been explicitly recognised in the New Basel Accord. In addition to capital requirements (Pillar I) and supervisory review (Pillar II), the Accord provides for a greater role of financial markets in complementing traditional supervisory activities by asking banks for increased transparency with regard to their operations (Pillar III). This article puts Pillar III in the broader context of direct and indirect market discipline. It is argued that both direct and indirect market discipline should be enhanced by the transparency requirements of the New Capital Accord, but that other conditions may also need to be met in order for market discipline to become more effective. Nevertheless, the article also shows that aggregated market prices can play a useful role in monitoring banking sector stability.
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Deposit Insurance, Moral Hazard and Market Monitoring
Reint E. Gropp, Jukka M. Vesala
Review of Finance,
No. 4,
2004
Abstract
The paper analyses the relationship between deposit insurance, debt-holder monitoring, and risk taking. In a stylised banking model we show that deposit insurance may reduce moral hazard, if deposit insurance credibly leaves out non-deposit creditors. Testing the model using EU bank level data yields evidence consistent with the model, suggesting that explicit deposit insurance may serve as a commitment device to limit the safety net and permit monitoring by uninsured subordinated debt holders. We further find that credible limits to the safety net reduce risk taking of smaller banks with low charter values and sizeable subordinated debt shares only. However, we also find that the introduction of explicit deposit insurance tends to increase the share of insured deposits in banks' liabilities.
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Bank-Firm Relationships and International Banking Markets
Hans Degryse, Steven Ongena
International Journal of the Economics of Business,
No. 3,
2002
Abstract
This paper reviews how long-term relationships between firms and banks shape the structure and integration of banking markets worldwide. Bank relationships arise to span informational asymmetries that are endemic in financial markets. Firm-bank relationships not only entail specific benefits and costs for both the engaged firms and banks, but also directly affect the structure of banking markets. In particular, the sunk cost of screening and monitoring activities and the 'informational capital' collected by the incumbent banks may act as a barrier to entry. The intensity of the existing firm-bank relationships will determine the height of this barrier and shape the structure of international banking markets. For example, in Scandinavia where firms maintain few and strong relationships, foreign banks may only be able to enter successfully through mergers and acquisitions. On the other hand, Southern European firms maintain many bank relationships. Therefore, banks may consider entering Southern European banking markets through direct investment.
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Rating Agency Actions and the Pricing of Debt and Equity of European Banks: What Can we Infer About Private Sector Monitoring of Bank Soundness?
Reint E. Gropp, A. J. Richards
Economic Notes,
No. 3,
2001
Abstract
The recent consultative papers by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has raised the possibility of an explicit role for external rating agencies in the assessment of the credit risk of banks’ assets, including interbank claims. Any judgement on the merits of this proposal calls for an assessment of the information contained in credit ratings and its relationship to other publicly available information on the financial health of banks and borrowers. We assess this issue via an event study of rating change announcements by leading international rating agencies, focusing on rating changes for European banks for which data on bond and equity prices are available. We find little evidence of announcement effects on bond prices, which may reflect the lack of liquidity in bond markets in Europe during much of our sample period. For equity prices, we find strong effects of ratings changes, although some of our results may suffer from contamination by contemporaneous news events. We also test for pre-announcement and post-announcement effects, but find little evidence of either. Overall, our results suggest that ratings agencies may perform a useful role in summarizing and obtaining non-public information on banks and that monitoring of banks’ risk through bond holders appears to be relatively limited in Europe. The relatively weak monitoring by bondholders casts some doubt on the effectiveness of a subordinated debt requirement as a supervisory tool in the European context, at least until bond markets are more developed.
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