Search results

This paper analyzes the relationship between dividend policy and the rate of return on bank holding company (BHC) stocks. We hypothesize that the representative investor in BHC shares has a preference for dividend income over prospective capital gains return. Regulatory policy is hypothesized as playing a role in the determination of the substitutability between dividends and capital gains. To test our hypothesis, two different specifications of the SML were established for the years 1971‐80. Our cross‐sectional sample included forty‐four large BHCs. In general, the statistical evidence provides support for the supposition that investors in BHC stock do not consider expected dividend return and capital gain return as perfect substitutes.

The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of policy discussions on the role of governance in limiting excessive risk-taking at times of turmoil.

Corporate governance measures are regressed on measures of risk taking using a sample of US bank holding companies (BHCs) during 2002-2014.

Results show that BHCs with more concentrated shareholders, more managerial ownership, smaller boards, and less outside directors undertake less risky investments with respect to total assets, loans, and off-balance-sheet items. Capital adequacy effect is overpowering pushing for more risky positions. Finally, banks with good governance push for less risky positions, even with larger capital ratios, during the financial crisis period relative to the precrisis boom.

This paper extends research on the association between bank ownership structure and risk taking. It adds to prior research by examining a key feature of banks, namely, their bank-specific capital adequacy. The relevance of this study stems from recent initiatives undertaken by the Basel Committee, the Group of Thirty (G30), and bank regulators to address deficient corporate governance structures that led to bank breakdowns.

One of the innovations of this paper is the use of risk-weighted measures to proxy for risk taking in banks, using risk weights used by bank regulators to adjust for operational risk, credit risk, and market risk.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of busy directors on bank risk. Busy directors are directors with multiple directorships and other corporate responsibilities.

First, univariate analysis is performed to see whether there are differences in governance structures of banks with busy boards and those with less‐busy boards of directors. Second, multivariate regression analysis is used with two measures of bank risk as the dependent variable to see whether busy directors impact bank risk, while controlling for other factors that may influence risk.

The paper finds that there are significant differences between banks in terms of governance structure when analyzing banks with busy boards and banks with less‐busy boards. Importantly, the study shows that bank risk is positively related to multiple board appointments of bank directors.

These results provide support for the “busyness hypothesis” as opposed to the “reputation hypothesis” and add to the understanding of whether busy directors hurt or help boards.

Results are important for regulators who seek to maintain a safe and sound banking system. Regulators can gain a better understanding of how much time and effort individual directors can contribute to a bank under examination.

This is the first study in the banking literature on multiple board appointments. It also uses a unique approach to test whether director busyness is a determinant of bank risk.

This study aims to examine the intertemporal changes in the institutional ownership of publicly traded bank holding companies (BHCs) in the USA. The role of owned-subsidiary investing in the portfolio decisions is investigated as compared to unaffiliated banks and non-bank institutional investors.

The authors apply panel regressions that control bank-fixed and time-fixed effects to study the impact of prudence, liquidity, information advantages and historical returns on each type of the institutional ownership from 1986 to 2014.

The subsidiary banks tend to invest in more shares of their parent BHCs when they are traded for a short period of time and when they have low-market risk, low turnover, a low capital equity ratio and great reliance on off-balance activities. However, the impact of these determinants of institutional ownership is opposite for unaffiliated banks and non-bank institutions.

This study provides evidence that the criteria used by subsidiary banks to invest in their parent company stock are different than the unaffiliated banks and non-bank institutions, raising concerns about the owned-subsidiary investing activities and banks’ trustees’ duty to work in the best interest of their trust clients.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the level and market value of BHC institutional ownership over the past three decades and the impact of different determinants on the ownership of BHCs by subsidiary banks, unaffiliated banks and non-bank institutional investors.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) depend on a large measure on commercial banks for external capital, and US SMEs are increasingly experiencing bank credit constraints and resorting to costly alternatives. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of lender organizational complexity on SME financing shortfalls. In particular, it examines the credit shortage effects associated with the SME's reliance on bank holding company (BHC) owned, as opposed to independent, lenders.

Building on agency–theoretic rationales, the authors posit that both hierarchical and horizontal complexity associated with present-day BHC structures will diminish an affiliated bank's ability and willingness to properly underwrite SME credit needs. Consequently, they hypothesize that SMEs whose commercial lenders are BHC affiliates are likely to experience greater credit shortages. This hypothesis was tested using exhaustive financial data from a large and nationally representative sample of US SMEs.

Greater SME reliance on loans from BHC lenders was found to be associated with a greater use of late trade–credit payments. The latter is an expensive form of financing and a generally accepted indicator of shortages in conventional (and cheaper) bank credit.

Despite the evolution toward more complex bank organizational forms, especially among community banks, the implications for SME lending are not yet fully understood. This paper's contribution is to offer a first examination of the impact of post-deregulation BHC structures on SME financing shortfalls.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether corporate governance structures influence the audit process in terms of audit fee pricing for regulated companies.

The paper first reviews prior literature and identifies factors within the categories of client size, audit risk, audit complexity, auditor‐related issues and corporate governance characteristics that are likely to influence audit fees of banking clients. It then regresses these variables on audit fees using an ordinary least square regression model for a sample of US listed bank holding companies (BHC).

The paper finds no significant association between most corporate governance variables and audit fees, suggesting that governance agents do not require additional assurance from the auditor, given close oversight by regulators. It also observes a negative association between audit committee independence and audit fees, implying that auditors reduce their effort and thus audit fees in the presence of an independent audit committee because they perceive that such committees reduce control and financial reporting risks.

In contrast with prior findings based on non‐regulated companies, governance agents in regulated companies such as BHC do not demand a more extensive audit. This reflects a substitution effect of regulatory oversight for internal governance monitoring. The paper also shows that BigN auditors modify their audit strategies in response to corporate governance mechanisms. Modifying audit strategies in accordance with the strength of governance mechanisms is consistent with recommendations in professional standards and would enable auditors to address risks more appropriately, thereby increasing audit quality and efficiency.

In 2009, effective the second-quarter, the financial accounting standards board mandated that all banks need to disclose the fair value of loans in their 10-Q filings in addition to their 10-K filings. This paper aims to investigate whether these disclosures reduced the level of information asymmetry about the riskiness of bank loan portfolios during the financial crisis.

The paper examines the impact of these disclosures on the bid-ask spread of a panel of 246 publicly traded bank holding companies. The spread serves as a proxy for information asymmetry and the ratio of the fair value of a bank’s loan portfolio to its book value is a proxy for the credit and liquidity risk associated with the same. The reaction to the first-quarter filing serves as a control to assess the reaction at the time of the second-quarter filing.

There is a significant negative association between bid-ask spread and the ratio indicating that the fair value information was useful in reducing information asymmetry during the financial crisis. A pattern was observed in the information dissemination related to the fair value of loans that is consistent with the literature that documents a delayed investor reaction to complex financial information.

Investors may use the fair value information to better assess the risk profile of a BHC’s loan portfolio. Also, loan fair values provide managers with data to better implement stress test models and determine optimal capital buffers.

This paper aims to investigate how the abstract marketing concept of brand heritage is operationalized through visual elements on social media.

A mixed-methods approach combines interviews with marketing experts, a focus group with specialized academics, an open coding of Instagram images and the systematic coding of 800 images of eight champagne brands (company-generated content).

The study identifies 20 brand heritage codes (e.g. groupings of brand heritage visual cues with homogenous meanings). These codes are combined in three different factors (brand symbols, product legacy and consumption rituals) that discriminate between brands.

The paper offers a description of what brand heritage looks like in practice. This visual operationalization of brand heritage is based on a single category, a limitation that further research can address. The results also contribute to research on visual brand identity and provide practical insights for the management of brand heritage at the product brand level.

This paper bridges the gap between the strategic management of brand heritage as a resource and the way it is concretely made available to the consumers.

We examine whether Douglas and Santerre's (1990) substitutes hypothesis obtains for bank holding companies (BHCs); i.e. whether degree of ownership concentration and salary incentives are alternative methods of aligning BHC CEO incentives with those of shareholders. Also examined is the relation between CEO salary and bonus and CEO tenure. Using a sample of 95 BHC drawn from the 1990 Forbes magazine compensation survey, we regress CEO salary and bonus against ROE, stock return, two measures of ownership concentration, and a CEO tenure variable. Our results 1) support the substitutes hypothesis as applied to BHCs, and, 2) find a negative relation between CEO salary and bonus and CEO tenure.

This paper aims to examine the post-merger changes in the credit risk profile of merging bank holding companies and tests whether there is an increase in credit risk after a merger due to changes in the mix of loans in the portfolio.

The authors use the expected variability of the credit risk of a loan portfolio based on the mix of loan types in the portfolio and the variability of the industry credit losses of each type following the standard Markowitz procedure for finding the standard deviation of an investment portfolio. The authors then test to see whether there has been a significant change in the expected variability (the credit risk profile) after a merger.

The authors find that there are significant differences in both the level and variability of loan charge-offs and non-performing loans (NPL) among the various loan categories. The authors also find significant changes in the mix of loan categories in the loan portfolio after a merger. In addition, the authors find that the expected variability in both the charge-off rate and the NPL rate rises significantly after a merger.

This is the first of two papers looking at post-merger changes in credit risk based simply on the changes in the mix of loan types; it does not consider the actual post-merger credit performance of the specific mergers. That will be addressed in a subsequent paper.

Financial analysts evaluating banking merger announcements may wish to include the impact of the likely shifts in loan mix and credit risk shown in this paper as they project the likely impact of the merger.

This paper addresses an aspect of bank mergers that has not been addressed in the literature, the impact of mergers on credit risk. The results are likely to be useful to investors, financial analysts and regulators.