Finance and economy, more importantly banking as a branch within finance, have a vast influence in our daily lives. History has shown that the decisions made by these institutions that were set up on one hand to provide security around the population’s wealth, and on the other to help manage and control the flow of money; can affect positively or negatively every member of society. Recently, populations around the world have suffered due to a crisis that sparked from the banking sector. This crisis has led the ethical culture in the industry as well as the role of governments and regulators to be questioned. This thesis presents an original perspective of ethics in the banking industry in the United Kingdom by analysing factors in the banking system influencing banker’s behaviour and evaluating the codes of conducts and codes of ethics of banking institutions. Using an OLS-moderated regression method, results show that certain aspects of the industry paradigm are not conducive to the preservation of ethics. It has been found that the long-term orientation, strategic aggressiveness, and competitive intensity of a bank can influence employees’ ethical behaviour. Finally, the evaluation of the codes of ethics and codes of conduct in the industry has shown important gap in the banks’ policies particularly with regards to the influence of banks strategic aggressiveness and competitive intensity on employee behaviour. This work has deep implications for further studies of ethics in the banking industry and could spark a new wave of research that will seek to formulate a proven framework to manage ethics in the industry.

The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of pre-merger and post-merger factors on the performance of mergers in Libyan government banks. Specifically, the study examines motivations behind Libyan banking mergers, and the influence of strategic fit, organisational cultural fit, speed of integration, and effectiveness of integration on the performance of mergers among Libyan government banks. The main conceptual framework was based on three different schools of thoughts: strategic management school, the process school and the organisational behavioural school. The theoretical model was examined through a cross-sectional research design i.e. structured questionnaire. Questionnaire data were collected from 169 managers in Libyan government banks. The findings reveal that mergers by government banks are seen primarily as a means to increase market power, to be able to compete with foreign banks, to enable faster entry to market and acquire organisational know-how. The findings also indicate that the organisational cultural fit improves the chances of merger performance. In addition, strategic complementarity positively influences cultural fit and integration effectiveness as well as merger performance. Finally, the findings indicate that merger performance is positively influenced by strategic complementarity, effectiveness of integration, and the speed of integration. Prior researchers primarily examined the impact of pre-merger factors and post-mergers factors separately. This study contributes to the existing literature by developing and empirically testing an integrative and holistic conceptual framework explaining the influence of pre-merger and post-merger factors on the performance of banking mergers. Hence, outcome of the study would bring clarity in understanding the relationship between different factors influencing merger performance.

The general purpose of this research is to close a gap in knowledge by generating new knowledge and understanding of the pre-evaluation structures, procedures and practices adopted by a large Jordanian bank in justifying information system (IS) investment projects, since limited attention has been given to this topic, particularly in the Jordanian banking sector (JBS). It investigates the organisational context and its influence on the process of IS investment pre-evaluation within the JBS. It also seeks to determine the level of formality of the evaluation techniques used. The study extends the existing knowledge in IS evaluation research by drawing on the interpretive case study approach and actor-network theory (ANT) combined with content, context, process framework (CCP) also known as interpretive contextualism to trace pre-evaluation practices in order to understand how IS proposals are developed and assessed in Jordan, a developing country. It makes important contributions to knowledge in the IS discipline, by applying existing theories to theorise IS pre- evaluation in a more novel and sophisticated way than before, by providing rich insight and by drawing specific implications. In combining ANT with CCP, the study offers a novel theorisation of pre-evaluation practices. For this reason, it is argued that ANT can be extended with CCP to offer explanations for contextual factors that are beyond the scope of an actor network. The findings show that there are important contextual factors in all development and implementation activities that affect or frame the evaluation process. IS proposals come into being and are made to work because of their characteristics, such as being dynamic and relational. The IS proposal has thus been re-conceptualised to represent the vision of future business activities and its functions associated with the IS in question. The study also finds that more flexibility in pre-evaluation methodology would be preferable, as it would allow the innovative capacity of the actors to play a significant role in articulating the future of these practices in banking. Among other recommendations, the study calls for research into evaluation throughout the IS lifecycle.

One of the main principles of Islamic Banking is to avoid interest (usury) in all forms of transactions because Muslims believe that they are not allowed to deal in usury and that they have to adopt an interest-free system. In order to achieve this, the Muslims have derived their guiding rules from the Islamic principles and used profit sharing mechanism rather than using the prevailing interest rate mechanism. The Muslim Economists have been trying to develope and present some successful real working examples of an interest-free economy. The usury "interest" is called in Islam "RIBA" a term which literally means increase or addition but from the Islamic technical point of of view it refers to the addition in the amount of the principal of the loan on the basis of time for which it is loaned and the amount of the loan. The objective of the Islamic Banks and Investment Companies is to develope Islamic forms of transaction that do not involve interest which is prohibted in Islam. Islam has nothing against the modern banking operational techniques or against the cooperation or coordination with western investment and banking institutions unless they conflict with the Islamic rules. The Quran, which is the fundamental source of the Islamic rules and principles has prohibited Riba. One of the implications of prohibition of Riba is that this prohibition eliminates all debt financing instruments as they exist in the traditional banking system. Islam has given some alternative transactions which do not involve Riba dealing. One of the important characteristics of the Islamic financial instruments is the Risk and Loss and Profit sharing. The cause of the prohibition of Riba will be discussed in detail in this study- The study will also list and explain some of the main investment instruments and forms used in the Islamic Banking. One of the most important forms of transaction developed in the Islamic Banks and Investment Companies is a form of sale called Murabaha. Murabaha is the most widely used form of transaction in the Islamic Banks and in the same time it is the most frequently subject to criticism. The Murabaha represents a special form of contracts for sale of goods. It is a Contract of Sale where the seller is obliged to disi cose to the buyer the initial cost of the goods and the margin of profit he marked. The objective of this study is to discuss this special form of transaction, make comments on how it is being practised in the Islamic Banks and Investment Companies. Being a newly developed investment instrument, the Murabaha in its modern application has not been the subject of many books or researches. Many books and publications discussed the subject of the Islamic Banking System but few of them highlighted the issue of the moderm Murabaha which is a different application of the old Islamic traditional form of Murabaha. The most important publications in this field are written recently after the Islamic Banks had adopted the Murabaha Sale Contract in its developed form. One of the books written in Murabaha is a book by DR. SAMI H. HOMOUD a distinguished Islamic Banker in the year 1976. The book is titled "DEVELOPMENT OF THE BANKING ACTIVITIES IN CONFORMITY WITH THE ISLAMIC SHARIA". The book discussed and highlighted all of the banking activities and was not devoted to Murabaha. Another writer in this field is DR. AHMAD A. ABDULLAH who, in the year 1987, wrote his book "MURABAHA, its principles, conditions and applications in the Islamic Banks". There are also some other Islamic Economists who wrote about the Murabaha sale such as Dr. Youssof Al Garadawi who wrote "Murabaha Sale to Purchase Orderer as applied in Islamic Banks", DR. ABDUL HAMEED AL BAALI, "The Jurisprudence of Murabaha" in addition to the "Scientific and Practical Islamic Banking Encyclopedia" issued by the International Institute of Islamic Banking & Economics.". There are some of the recent publications which discussed the issue of Murabaha in the Islamic Banks and Investment Companies. There are old publications and books that referred to and explained this form of transaction. These are written by old Muslim Thinkers and Jurists but, of course, they did not discuss the modern applications of the Murabaha Contract as they were not known at those early days. The Murabaha Contract has been dealt with and discussed from different points of view which the writer intends to discuss and elaborate in this study which will be divided into four chapters. The First Chapter will be concerned with explaining the concept of the Islamic Banks and Investment Companies showing their main characteristics and the points of difference between the Islamic Banks and the Conventional Banks. The chapter also describes some of the important islamic investment instruments which are being applied in the Islamic Banks. The Second Chapter of the study will be devoted to explain the meaning of Murabaha both literally and in the Islamic Sharia and the stand of the different Muslim Jurists towards the definition of the Murabaha Contract. In the second part of this chapter, the author will explain how the Murabaha Sale used to be practiced in the early days of Islam and how it is being applied now a days in the modern Islamic Banks and Investment Companies. A detailed description of the transaction will be given in this chapter showing how the transaction starts with a purchase order from the client to the Bank which purchases the required goods under its name, possesses them and then re-sells them to the client. The Second Chapter also includes the general and the special conditions required to achieve a proper Murabaha Contract. The general conditions are the conditions which apply to all contracts regardless of their type such as the legal capacity of the parties, offer and acceptance, valuable consideration and that the contract should not involve any usury. On the other hand, the special conditions are those which apply to the Murabaha Sale Contract as a special form of contract. These conditions include that the original purchase price should be disclosed to the buyer, the initial contract must be a valid one in accordance to the principles of the Islamic Sharia and that the goods should be owned by the seller at the time of the Sale Contract. The third chapter of the study will contain the main problems facing the application of the Murabaha Contract in the Islamic Banks and Investment Companies showing that one of the main issues in this regard is in the execution of the contract in the Banks which, in many cases, affects the properness of the Murabaha. The chapter will also involve in the points of criticism which are raised against the application of this form of transaction. Some of the main points of criticism include that the Murabaha transaction involves usury, that it is a sale of what the seller does not own and that the transaction in its moden form was not known at the early days of Islam. All criticisms will be discussed in detail and it will be shown that some of them are true and genuine and some actions need to be taken in order to rectify the transaction. In the fourth chapter a summary of the findings of the study will be given stating the writers opinion and recommendations for the establishment of a proper application of the Islamic forms of transaction especially for the Murabaha Sale of Goods. The most important points relate to the qualifications, the concern and the seriousness of the officials and the executives of the Islamic Banks and Companies who should be always well trained in the business so that they can be able to face the challenge. -it

Whilst the digitisation of government-to-person (G2P) payments, or government social cash, is becoming increasingly significant for governments to advance financial inclusion in developing countries, the role of mobile banking (m-banking) to promote this agenda remains under researched. The extant literature available on m-banking was delimited to person-to-person (P2P) payments that examined m-banking through an economic or technological lens from providers’ perspectives. Hence, in this study, I have used the Duality of Technology (DoT) as a socio-technical lens to analyse m-banking innovation from both providers’ and users’ perspectives. The methodology used was a case study of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in Pakistan that disbursed G2P payments to poor women only. The study aimed to investigate the influence of the external and internal institutional forces on the social construction of m-banking, how m-banking enabled and/or constrained programme managers and women beneficiaries, and the effects of m-banking on the institutional properties of poor households for structural transformation, or financial inclusion in BISP households in Pakistan. Primary data was collected from key participants located in the m-banking pilot sites of Islamabad and Rawalpindi in Pakistan. In total, 33 semi-structured interviews were conducted with BISP managers, women beneficiaries, bankers, mobile operator and international agency staff, and 2 focus groups were organised with women beneficiaries. Additionally, secondary data was drawn from company reports, official documents and formal and informal media sources. The qualitative data was thematically analysed, and the data collated from multiple sources and methods established the validity, credibility, trustworthiness and reliability of the conceptual outcomes in the case study. The findings, interpreted through DoT, disclosed that m-banking was socially constructed to meet managerial objectives, and being socially-embedded in the BISP context, it was transformative in enabling managers to achieve transparency, visibility, security and efficiency in delivering G2P payments. From women beneficiaries’ perspectives, m-banking provided flexibility and convenience to receive full payments, but embedded certain socio-economic, technological and human constraints that restricted their access to and usage of financially inclusive services that limited financial inclusion. However, owing to women’s empowerment and social change, social inclusion was perceived to be progressively transformative. Although the findings informed the DoT framework, we conclude that the Information Communications and Technology for Development (ICT4D) discourse was deterministic for beneficiaries, unless combined with the Capabilities vision. As contribution to the study, we shed light on how m-banking may be redesigned to embed resources to expand women beneficiaries’ capabilities and skills, in addition to, providing access to financial resources for steering micro-entrepreneurial activities. Also, financial and digital training should be imparted to beneficiaries to advance the inclusion agenda in Pakistan.

No description available.

This thesis consists of three main essays on the global dimension of financial inclusion. These empirical analyses are different, yet related to each other. The main focus of the thesis is on constructing a broader multidimensional measure of financial inclusion as a composite index that can be used to assess the ease of and use of the access to financial markets. Additionally, as one of the main contributions of this study, access to other financial institutions such as microfinance institutions, post offices and cooperatives, has been added to the analysis to explore its impact on poverty and Islamic finance. The International Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics and Financial Access Survey databases, the World Bank’s Global Financial Development and Global Findex databases, and the survey data by Beck et al. (2006a) are used to collect the indicators of the indices. Using the broader multidimensional financial inclusion indices as a proxy of financial access, the study aims to assess the impact of financial inclusion on poverty reduction in the third chapter. In the next chapter, using the constructed financial inclusion indices as a proxy of financial exclusion, it aims to explore the impact of Islamic finance on financial exclusion to examine why our constructed financial inclusion indices are better measurements of financial access. Using the constructed indices in two different analyses, this thesis tests the arguments in studies that have made original contributions in the literature, to explore the predictability and comparability of these indices as the proxy of financial inclusion.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the definition and measurement of the potential output and the output gap, to examine the definition and determinants of the size and the behaviour of excess liquidity in the banking sector in transition economies and last, to explore the theoretical and empirical links between the output gap and excess liquidity. Estimating potential output and the corresponding output gap is deemed as particularly relevant for the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy as well as in providing useful insights regarding the state of the economy, especially for periods with below potential production. One of the most important factors associated with a large output gap may be the efficiency of financial systems in transition economies, in particular the behaviour of banks, as they represent the main source of finance with capital markets being in their infancy. Access to banking loans is one of the main sources of finance for a firm’s growth, while excess liquidity holdings are a feature of several European transition economies. Thus, another research question addressed in this thesis is why do banks in transition economies continuously accumulate excess reserves in the face of seemingly profitable loans to invest in, relative to developed countries, which are also costly to maintain. Criticizing the prior definitions of excess liquidity in the existing literature as imprecise, another theoretical added value of this thesis consists on clarifying the excess liquidity concept and subsequently redefining its measurement. Augmenting the model with risk, regulatory and institutional variables, the findings suggest that involuntary factors that are mainly outside of banks’ control (e.g. lack of credit demand, poor institutional framework) prevail in inducing banks to accumulate excess reserves, relative to the precautionary motive. Treating potential endogeneity issue between excess liquidity and the output gap, the last finding of this research proclaims that rather being in a causal relationship, both are actually correlated via the common observed and unobserved determinants. Due to the lack of a clear transmission mechanism from one to the other factor, rather than pushing banks to reduce excess liquidity to extend lending and consequently to reduce the output gap, a policy implication of the thesis is that other factors outside of the system that are capable of pushing both variables in the desired direction need to be identified. The avoidance of a policy where banks are pushed to reduce excess liquidity is the main policy implication of this chapter, since that may lead into a new wave of bad loans rather than impetus to economic activity.

In recent years, it has been witnessed that a number of countries are trying to recover from a deep recession which spread widely around the world. Researchers have pointed out that the laxity of credit risk management is one of the causes of the growth in the number of non-performing loans. It is necessary, therefore, to work out a method to improve the efficiency of credit risk management. This thesis examined five large commercial banks in China and studied their credit risk management processes. This study intends to develop an up-to-date understanding of Chinese banking industry, covering some aspects of credit risk management, banking profitability and competition level using Panzar and Rosse model. The results have shown that the current competition level in Chinese banking industry is monopolistic competition. Regarding credit risk management, a set of face to face questionnaires aimed at the senior credit risk managers helped the author to analyse some existing management process in some aspect of loan decision making. Results indicated that the larger the size of the branch, the higher rate of return it generates on their investments. The rate of return is considered as an indicating factor to examine the profitability of banks. Furthermore, a discussion on banking profitability has been carried out using Augmented Dickey-Fuller test, Johansen’s co-integration test and Granger causality test. The results have shown that there is no short term relationship between capital ratio and profitability. According to trade-off theory and pecking order theory, it 6 can be understood that the capital ratio of Chinese banks, during the examined period of time, was close to the optimum capital ratio. The author hopes that the findings of empirical analysis in this work could play some part during the process of bank lending and borrowing activities and therefore reduce non-performing loans and increase the profitability.

The recent global financial crisis (2007-2009) might seem like a distant memory, however the impact and implications of the Basel 3 Accord¹, (the brain-child of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the G20) lives on; at least for the entire phase-in period (1 January 2013 to 1 January 2023). Even though Ghana and Kenya like some other African countries were affected by the global financial crisis (although not to the same extent as some European countries), both countries as well as most African countries were conspicuously absent during the negotiations phase of Basel 3, perhaps with the exception of South Africa. Notwithstanding this under-representation by African countries, Basel 3 is expected to have a degree of impact and implications for large commercial banks in Ghana and Kenya and the African continent at large. In view of this, an analysis of the impact and implications of the capital adequacy provisions of Basel 3 on large commercial banks in Ghana and Kenya would be incomplete without first highlighting the relevance of Basel 3 to African countries. The capital adequacy provisions of Basel 3 requires banks to ensure that they possess enough capital which must be of sufficient quality to address banking risks and to absorb substantial bank losses – a requirement already being met by banks in South Africa, a member of the G20. With South Africa having already begun the implementation of Basel 3, it is only a matter of time before other African countries follow suit. Nonetheless and regardless of whether Ghana and Kenya implement Basel 3 or not, there will be implications for all, not least the large commercial banks within these 2 jurisdictions. This thesis thus investigates the implications of the capital adequacy provisions of Basel 3 on large commercial banks in Ghana and Kenya.