This thesis uses a new institutional sociology perspective to examine the adoption of corporate governance practices in Libyan commercial banks (LCBs). In particular, it investigates the perceptions of various stakeholders towards corporate governance in LCBs in order to provide a general understanding of how different types of institutional pressures (isomorphism) have influenced and shaped the current corporate governance practices of LCBs and to investigate whether LCBs have adopted the same corporate governance practices or whether there are any differences across different banks. For this purpose, two pieces of empirical work, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey were conducted respectively. The interviews were held with a number of stakeholders in Libya in 2009 to ascertain their views on corporate governance in LCBs. The extant literature and the findings from the interviews have informed the second part of the empirical work of this thesis examining the corporate governance of three different banks: a state-owned bank; a bank with part Western ownership as a strategic partner; and a privately owned Libyan bank. A questionnaire survey of different stakeholder groups was conducted in 2010 about the practices of these three banks to establish whether the ownership structure or any other factors have affected the governance practices of these three banks and whether certain features have been institutionalised. The main findings indicate that the concept of corporate governance is new in LCBs, only introduced in 2006 when the CBL issued its Corporate Governance Guidelines for Boards of Directors in LCBs, and thus its adoption in Libya still in its early stage. Although such guidelines were very important for LBCs to establish their own corporate governance system and practices, LCBs are not yet ready to accept and adopt corporate governance because of the boards and executive managements are not focused on adopting corporate governance. Moreover, the guidelines are not mandatory and need board members that are practised in dealing with corporate governance issues, and therefore, the guidelines have been mostly ignored leading to many poor practices. The findings illustrate that different types of institutional pressures are shaping the current corporate governance practices and reforms in LCBs, especially coercive pressure from the CBL and the Libyan Bank Law requirements. However, such pressures are inadequate, as they only focus on the composition of the board. Further, the influence of these institutional pressures, to some extent, varies according to the ownership structure of LCBs, making some differences in responding to institutional pressures, and thus in corporate governance practices between LCBs. Overall, the findings illustrate that there is a need for more effort and pressure from the CBL to encourage and press LCBs to adopt better corporate governance practices. In this context, the latest developments indicate that the CBL is continuing to exert coercive pressure on LCBs to comply with sound corporate governance practices. The CBL developed and replaced the voluntary Corporate Governance Guidelines by the Corporate Governance Code for the Banking Sector (2010), which will mandatorily apply in 2011.

In the last few years, variable pricing has attracted more and more attention in consumer lending industry. In the credit card market, there is a trend that traditional pricing strategy (fixed rate pricing) is gradually being replaced by variable pricing. The objective of this thesis is to investigate how adverse election and external influences (the Basel Accords or other banking regulations) could affect lender's profitability and pricing decisions under different pricing strategies. This thesis consists of three aspects: 1) We briefly outline why and how modelling the choice of credit card by a borrower as an auction process means that the winner's curse can lead to adverse selection. We show that the relationships between the actual default risk of a borrower and the lender's perceived view of this risk are very simple ones, whatever the distribution of errors the lender makes. By building a simple model of the profit a lender makes from a loan, we are able to examine what the effect of these errors could have on the lender's expected and actual profit. 2) We look at how the regulatory capital requirements in different versions of the Basel Accords (Basel 1, Basel 2 and Basel 3) affect acceptation and pricing decisions under three distinct pricing strategies: fixed rate pricing, two rates pricing and variable rates pricing. We implement this both in the case where a lender has an agreed cost of equity for each unit of equity needed to cover the regulatory capital requirements and where a lender decides in advance how much of its equity capital can be set aside to cover the requirements of its loan portfolio. 3) We explain how two special problems (lending quota and lending floor) in credit lending affect acceptation decision of a lender. Our simple consumer lending process is found to be similar to the classical marriage/secretary problem. We thus use Markov Decision Process (MDP) model to investigate the form of optimal policy under these two limited lending problems.

Defining organisational culture as organisational (bank) practices 'the way we do things around here', this study investigates the impact of organisational culture on organisational performance and fraud in the whole Indonesian banking system, using a set of panel data for the period of 2005-9. The research was motivated to fill-in the gap and to rectify the imbalance on the literature in the current global financial crisis and fraud still occurring environment, despite having been undergoing a programme of restructuring and transformation after Indonesia economic and currency crisis (1997-1998). Using appropriate econometric methods in analysing the secondary highly restricted and confidential data from Bank Indonesia (the central bank), this thesis answers the questions: (i) does organisational culture (sound banking practices) impact banking performance? in terms of a set of comprehensive performance: capital, assets, earnings, liquidity and fraud; (ii) if so, does organizational culture make different performance? based on different types of ownerships; (iii) if so, does organizational culture differentiate high-and-low bank performance. Using fixed-effects regression analysis and confirmed robustness by cross sectional regression analysis after having done Chow test and Hausmann test, multicollinearity and robustness standard error tests, this thesis results confirm all the research questions and sustain the organisational culture and performance link. The results support the widely believe in the literature that suggests organisational culture is a resource that produces better organisational performance, whilst minimising fraud. There is also acknowledgment that organisational culture differentiates high-and low performance banks, as well as based on different types of ownerships, namely: state, foreign, private and regional government banks. The results also suggest the best practices of high performance banks as finding the right balance between management actions and bank supervision functions. In particular, the result also verifies that the better the management and control function practices work-together effectively towards the same direction, the better the performance of the banks.

This thesis consists of three substantive essays on the financial and banking sectors in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, each constituting a separate chapter. The first essay (Chapter 2) investigates the relationship between banking market concentration and competition levels and the soundness of Islamic and conventional banks operating in MENA. The study employs a dataset of 152 banks across 10 MENA countries (40 Islamic and 112 conventional) over 2004-2009. We find that MENA's banking concentration and competition levels are negatively related to banks' soundness. Our evidence also shows that Islamic banks are less sound than their conventional counterparts, and that the Islamic nature of banks results in higher return on assets, capitalisation and volatility of profits. However no significant differences in competiveness between the two segments were observed.

The purpose of the thesis is to explore the effects of ownership structure on bank corporate lending and credit risk control during the lending process in China by doing the case study of different types of commercial banks in Hunan Province. These issues are investigated under a proposed integrated political economic framework based on central-local government relationship from an institution economy perspective, principal-agent relationship and soft-budget constraint theory. The thesis consists of nme chapters. The first chapter gIves the introduction on the research topic, explains the motivations and research questions. After a literature review with related theoretical analysis in chapter two, Chapter three is devoted to the research design, including the methodology, data collection and research hypothesis. The fOUl1h chapter firstly delivered an introduction of the institutional changes of China's banking system by different types of banks; then, banking regulation reform in China with the independence of banking regulatory institutions at different stages will be discussed. Chapter five gives an introduction to the region economy in Hunan province where three commercial banks as the objectives of case studies located. Then, the following three chapters, chapter six, seven and eight, focus on case studies of three different types of commercial banks with case studies in Hunan Province. Chapter Nine draws the conclusions based on the proceeding chapters. The mam contribution of the research is to fulfilling the gap of the existing literature on government ownership effects on corporate lending behavior of China's banking industry at local level. Especially this thesis has helped to understand the underlying formation mechanism of the current tri-relationships among governments, enterprises and companies. Through these analyses, the present study argues that the banking system in China is not yet a free market. Because of China's unique political system, ownership is still the major determining factor for the lending behavior of commercial banks. The credit risk control procedures during the lending process are formatted in such a way to facilitate its lending behavior. However, this practice could lead to potential problems. Therefore this study has significant and urgent practical importance under current global financial crisis. It also provides policy makers with valuable insights into China's bank development process.

The thesis deals with the optimization of retail banks' branch and Internet banking channels resulting from 1) the use of Porter's competitive strategy model which is suitable for the outside- in research approach adopted; 2) the potential for realizing improved efficiency and effectiveness; and 3) customers' requirements and satisfaction with products and services. Six research questions are posed: 1) Is M. Porter's competitive strategy appropriate for use among retail banks? 2) Is it correct that large banks are more cost efficient than are small- medium sized banks? 3) Are mass market retail bank customers generally satisfied with the products and services received? 4) Are there points of differentiation banks may use to remain competitive? 5) Does gender, age, place of residence, or occupation imply different banking requirements and satisfaction levels? 6) Are there customer segments in the marketplace with requirements not fulfilled by traditional retail banks? Banks are encouraged to balance inside-out and outside-in strategic approaches. Banks shall optimize learning, innovation and leadership capabilities as suggested by the Resource Based view to enhance customer experience and reduce inefficiency. Porter's competitive strategy has been extensively used in previous research and therefore here as a starting point for the research. The findings indicate that the differentiation options suggested by Porter are only partly suitable to banks. There are non-sustainable differentiation options which banks may focus on: lower prices; enhanced competences and interpersonal skills of the advisor; branch logistics; and Internet banking features. Large banks are not more cost efficient than are medium sized banks. This is because scale and scope inefficiencies in banking are small and the inability of management to facilitate progress and execute on operational obligations explains almost all the combined 20% X-inefficiency. The analysis results in four customer segments with different requirements particularly for channels. Customers are overall satisfied with products and services. There are significant differences between male and female customers' requirements and satisfaction. The primary data collection was undertaken prior to the financial crisis. A post-crisis investigation is likely to modify importance and satisfaction levels and emphasize the significance of banks offering sufficient lending facilities.

Like its predecessor, Basel II has profoundly shaped bank capital adequacy regimes across the world. However, there has been little systematic research on the state of Basel II implementation across developed and developing countries, and the factors that promote or hinder the implementation of these voluntary standards are particularly under-researched. By drawing on a new global dataset of Basel II implementation across 150 countries compiled by the author, this thesis evaluates the state of Basel II implementation at the global level and investigates why countries implement Basel II. Three novel channels of policy diffusion formed across supervisory authorities, global banks and financial sectors were specifically constructed to study the diffusion of Basel II policies using a mixed-method research design. A quantitative study tests the effects of policy diffusion on Basel II implementation across four distinct channels of diffusion formed by inter-supervisory authority networks, the cross-border structure of international banks, competition between financial sectors and the nexus of international economic exchange. This is complemented by in-depth case studies that unpack the causal process through which policy diffusion shaped the national implementation of Basel II in Chile, Hong Kong, Korea and Malaysia. I find that the state of Basel II implementation at the global level is highly uneven and clustered, and show that Basel II policy decisions in countries are highly interdependent on the policy decisions of other countries with which those countries are closely interconnected. Policy diffusion not only promotes the degree of convergence with Basel II, but also reinforces partial, gradual and delayed implementation. The diffusion of implementation policies can thus be a curse and a blessing for the future of Basel II and the broader global financial regulatory architecture due to its double-edged power to promote as well as hinder the degree of regulatory convergence with international financial standards.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is mainly concerned with the efficiency and competitive behaviour of the commercial banks in Malaysia for the period 1994 - 2000. Firstly, efficiency, either technical or cost, is defined as a relative concept. Technical efficiency is derived from a production frontier function whilst cost efficiency is obtained from a cost frontier function. The measurement of technical efficiency uses two basic DEA models that make two assumptions: constant returns to scale and variable returns to scale. Having obtained the efficiency scores, further investigation is made into identifying the sources of productivity growth. This is done by constructing the Malmquist productivity index. In contrast, the estimation of cost efficiency under the parametric approach is performed by using two methods: the stochastic frontier approach and the fixed effects method. For the purpose of measuring efficiency, this study uses three inputs and three outputs selected based intermediation approach. The competitive behaviour of the banks is determined by employing the Panzar-Rosse methodology. This methodology requires two tests: equilibrium and a competition test. The H-statistic is then obtained that will determine the level of contestability in the market. This study finds that, in general, the average efficiency measures are subject to the estimation technique used. It shows that the DEA technique generates higher efficiency scores than the parametric methods. It is also shown that the scores are positively related to each other. The study also finds that bank ownership plays important role. It suggests that the foreign banks in general are more efficient than the domestic banks. With regard to sources of productivity growth, the main contributor is improvement in technology rather than efficiency improvement. Finally, the study shows that the commercial banks are best described as operating under monopolistic competition.