Widespread losses during the recent financial crisis have raised concerns that equitybased CEO compensation (stocks and stock options) causes risky bank policies. This has led to the need to understand whether CEO pay can be re-structured such that it dampens risk-taking incentives. Against this background, this thesis analyses if debtbased compensation (also known as inside debt and consisting of pension benefits and deferred compensation) motivates CEOs to pursue risk-reducing bank policies. Over three decades of research into executive compensation has not explored the impact of inside debt, primarily due to lack of detailed data on inside debt which only became available after 2006 in the United States (US). The paucity of empirical work on inside debt is particularly unfortunate, given that the value of inside debt is often substantial. This dissertation provides one of the first empirical investigations into the impact of inside debt on bank risk-taking by determining whether CEO inside debt leads to less risky behaviour, through three policy decisions that are capable of increasing the overall risk of the bank. First, this thesis focuses on the payout policies of banks. Bank payouts divert cash to shareholders, while leaving behind riskier and less liquid assets to repay creditors in the future. Payouts, thus, constitute a type of risk-taking that benefits shareholders at the expense of creditors. The results presented in this thesis indicate that higher inside debt results in more conservative bank payout policies. Specifically, CEOs paid with more inside debt are more likely to cut payouts and to cut payouts by a larger amount. Reductions in payouts occur through a decrease in both dividends and repurchases. The results also hold over a sub-sample of banks which received government support in the form of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) where the link between risk-taking and payouts is of particular relevance because it involves wealth transfers from the taxpayer to shareholders. Second, this thesis tests the impact of inside debt on the risk implications of bank acquisitions. Bank acquisitions are large scale investment decisions that can affect bank risk. To this end, this thesis shows that higher inside debt holdings motivate CEOs to pursue acquisitions that result in lower bank default risk. It also prevents CEOs from using acquisitions to shift risk to the financial safety-net. Since the safety net is underwritten by the taxpayer, the results show that CEO inside debt has a measurable impact on the subsidy which bank shareholders obtain from taxpayers. Third, the thesis shows that inside debt plays a critical role in influencing bank capital holdings. Higher equity capital provides creditors with a larger loss-absorbing equity buffer to protect the value of their claims on bank cash flows. Ceteris paribus, higher equity protects creditors from losses. To this end, this thesis shows that higher inside debt results in motivating banks to hold higher capital, whether defined using regulatory or economic terms. Higher inside debt also results in reducing the estimated value of the taxpayer losses. Furthermore, banks with higher inside debt are at a lower risk of facing capital shortfalls. Taken together, the study provides insights on how incentives stemming from inside debt impact bank policies in a manner that protects creditor interests. Inside debt can help in addressing excessive risk-taking concerns by aligning the interests of CEOs with those of creditors, regulators, and the taxpayer. This thesis makes a novel contribution to the banking literature by providing evidence on the implications of inside debt in the US banking industry. This work should be interpreted as part of a wider body of research which demonstrates that inside debt matters for bank risk-taking and that this role of inside debt should be recognized more widely in ongoing discussions on compensation incentives in banking.

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The concept of “social capital” has received considerable attention these years. Yet, few studies have explored the connections between social capital and bank risk-taking. In this study, I discuss the theory of social capital and its relevance to financial market behavior, and then I analyze the relationship between social capital and bank risk-taking across countries. To measure social capital, I follow Knack and Keefer (1997) and use the data of trust and civic norms collected from the World Values Survey. My measure of bank risk-taking is the nature logarithm of Z-score of each bank. Empirical results show that bank risk-taking is lower in countries where social capital is higher. It is also shown that the impact of social capital is stronger when the level of education in the country is lower. This paper investigates the negative impact of social capital on non-performing loan as well.

No / Purpose – Bank securitisation is deemed to have been a major contributing factor to the 2007/2008 financial crises via fuelling credit growth accompanied by lower banks’ credit standards. Yet, prior to the crisis a common view was that securitisation activity makes the financial system more stable as risk was more easily diversified, managed and allocated economy-wide. The purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature to explore the so far generated knowledge on the impact of securitisation on banking risks. In particular, the authors examine the theoretical arguments and empirical studies on securitisation and banking risks before and after the global financial crisis of 2007/2008. Design/methodology/approach – Review and discussion of the literature. Findings – Theoretical literature univocally accentuate the undesirable consequences of securitisation, which may promote retention of riskier loans, undermine banks’ screening and monitoring incentives and enhance banks’ risk appetite. However, empirical evidence does not uniformly support the theoretical conclusions. If banks are securitisation active they lend more to risky borrowers, have less diversified portfolios and hold less capital, retain riskier loans and are aggressive in loan pricing. Others argue that securitisation reduces banks insolvency risk, increases profitability, provides liquidity and leads to greater supply of loans. Mortgage securitisation is an area where there is consistent evidence of bank risk taking via securitisation. Originality/value – The paper identifies open issues for future research.

The banking sector is central to the economy, but has recurrent dysfunctions. Following the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, regulators have attempted to reform governance in banks. However, previous empirical studies on the effects of governance structures have important gaps. Using an econometric framework with novel simultaneous equations models and new dependent variables, I investigate whether corporate governance and ownership have significant effects on bank risk and performance. I employ a novel data set combining financial data from the Bankscope database with governance and ownership data collected painstakingly by hand from annual reports and Basel Pillar 3 disclosures of UK banks over the period 2003-2012. My findings are supported by interpretation of relevant literature and are summarised as follows (stated along with policy implications in parentheses for which features of banking should be encouraged, based on normative assumptions stated in section 9.3). My work shows that the effects of a particular ownership or governance structure can be attributed to the ways in which categories of decision-maker within the bank are empowered by that structure, and that factors relating to information processing capability have important effects. Mutual and foreign ownership each have negative effects on risk and return because of managerial incentives and information asymmetries, respectively, without either affecting provision of investment to the wider economy. A foreign parent also increases the probability of bank failure (implying mutuality is socially beneficial while foreign ownership is not). A higher NED ratio reduces the probability of bank failure, as does having a remuneration committee, because of greater accounting for risk in decisions (implying they are desirable). The presence of an independent Chairman increases risk because it weakens CEO accountability and confuses decision-making (implying it is undesirable). An independent CRO (as a full Board member) may have similar effects. A higher proportion of Directors with no previous financial services experience increases both returns and the probability of failure because of weaker use of information (implying it is undesirable). Permission to use IRB models lowers risk and return because it provides information to empower risk-averse agents, again without affecting credit provision to the wider economy (implying it is desirable). I report other novel findings on effects of ownership, governance, remuneration and size. These results can guide bank reform.

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In recent years, the government gradually opens the new bank establishment, causes the financial organ to enter another competition the time. However because the petroleum crisis causes the inflation, the original material rise, the interest rate undulation to be frequent, the industrial field and the finance service sector's control relaxes or relieves the limiting condition, causes many investments services multiplex, the negotiable securities, the liberalization and the internationalization. Furthermore, because under the financial service multiplication transformation, its service area separates day by day fuzzily, the financial organ should truly understand the bank storm danger spot, establishes the good risk management system, conforms to principle of the organization safe steady transport business. The new Basel capital accord reached an agreement already is regarded as one of international finance overseeing standards; In its agreement regarding the credit risk credit appraisal, the final goal is expected the silver behavior establishment innate internal credit comments and so on the system (IRB) reflects bank itself the management essence. The computation credit risk standard method and the interior comment and so on the law may say is the important angle in new Basel capital accord , the interior to comment and so on the law is according to 1988 the old version reached an agreement made the revision. This research also aims at in the new old version and new edition the credit risk in the risk weights, carries out the standard, various countries' implementation present situation, and makes the share questionnaire survey to understand our country finance industry and the enterprise regarding the new edition procedure, do again with Europe and America alternately compares. The expectation penetrates these comparative analyses, can discover difference and the improvement revises the place, provides our country financial organ and the proper authorities, faces up to the risk management transport business of regarding the organization importance, truly achieved so-called and international connects rails the goal.

This thesis studies the impact of macro stress testing on the riskiness of the participating banks. We use a dataset on 48 banks participating in either or both of the 2010 and 2011 EU exercises performed by the CEBS/EBA and 17 peer banks that did not participate. We find that early announcement of the 2010 stress test led to a temporary capitalization increase for the participating banks. We also find that disclosure of the 2011 exercise results caused a decline in capitalization for the participating banks. The results indicate that the way stress tests are prepared and communicated can strongly influence how banks react in terms of capitalization levels. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

In this dissertation, we first examine the relationship between performance of the bank holding company and several board characteristics. We use five proxies for bank performance including Tobin’s Q, ROA, loan loss reserve ratio, non-performing asset ratio, and net charge-offs ratio. Board characteristic variables we include are board size, proportion of outsiders, CEO power, CEO tenure and board tenure. We find that a large board enhances bank performance, as proxied by Tobin’s Q and loan quality variables. We find no evidence that board structure or CEO power influences firm performance. We see that CEO and board tenure have a positive effect on firm performance. We further employ a crisis dummy during the period 2007 through 2009 to determine if the relationships between firm performance and board characteristics changed during the crisis. Our crisis results show us that board size has a negative effect on Tobin’s Q and the non-performing asset ratio during the crisis. Further, we find that board structure decreases the non-performing asset ratio during the crisis. We next examine the relationship between risk-taking of the bank holding company and several board characteristics. We use four accounting based proxies for bank risk-taking including credit risk, liquidity risk, capital ratio and operational risk. We also use three market based proxies for bank risk including market beta, idiosyncratic risk and the standard deviation of its stock return. Board characteristic variables we include are board size, board independence, CEO duality, CEO tenure and board tenure. We find that a large board reduces both balance sheet and market risk. We further investigate the relationships between risk-taking and board characteristics changed during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. We find that our results are robust during the crisis.

These three studies on the effect of national culture on banking aim at advancing knowledge and understanding of bank risk-taking, deposits and profitability by adding culture to their determining factors. Banking is a highly regulated industry, and one would expect informal institutions such as national culture not to influence management decisions. However, it seems that bank managers but also bank customers are susceptible to cultural biases making their influence on risk taking, deposit and profitability levels statistically and economically significant. In the first study, I find that national culture is an important bank-risk determinant. Specifically, I find a positive (negative) association between the cultural values of individualism and hierarchy (trust) and domestic bank risk-taking. This relation weakened during the recent financial crisis and does not hold for global banks, regardless of the period under investigation. In the second study, I report a positive association between trust and deposits which holds for domestic as well as global banks, supporting the popular view that banking is based on trust. Motivated by two relatively new regulations (Net Stability Funding Ratio and Liquidity Coverage Ratio), enforced to safeguard stable liquidity, I use interaction effects to find that high deposit volatility mitigates the positive impact of trust on deposit levels. In the third study, I identify national culture as an important determinant of bank profitability. Looking separately into global and domestic banks, the former are less prone to cultural influences compared to the latter. Furthermore, domestic banks with foreign ownership/management are less susceptible to cultural biases compared to domestic banks with local ownership/management. Finally, banks operating in conservative, hierarchical societies are expected to face more challenges with fintech disturbance, compared to banks operating in egalitarian societies. My results are statistically and economically significant and robust to endogeneity tests mitigating reverse causality and confounding effect concerns.