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The aim of this paper is to examine the question of the specialness of banks by addressing concerns raised in the recent studies and deriving policy implications for the future of banking. The specialness of banks has been well documented in the finance literature. More recent research, however, calls into question the special nature of banks.

We use event study methodology to study 423 bank loan announcements from 1988 to 1996 and examine the returns relative to proxies for the bank ' s monitoring incentives and skill using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions.

Our results indicate borrower abnormal announcement returns are positively related to proxies for the bank ' s monitoring incentives and skill as measured by: the ratio of uninsured deposits to total loans; a risk-adjusted measure of recovered charge-offs; and the relative bank-to-borrower capital ratio.

The results reveal how the fragile nature of the bank ' s structure improves the bank ' s incentives to monitor borrowers.

Our results can inform the current debates in the Fed and in Congress surrounding reapplying the Glass-Steagall Act and limiting the size of banks. We show that banks were special before the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and when fewer banks belonged to the too-big-to-fail category. This suggests that reregulating banks to re-establish their fragile nature will re-establish them as information-generating intermediaries instead of just transactional institutions.

Our findings have not previously been documented but are broadly consistent with models developed by Calomiris and Kahn (1991) and especially Diamond and Rajan (2001).

We investigate the nature of mid-loan relationships between bank-lenders and borrowers, to test whether firms borrow from banks to signal quality. Using the LPC DealScan, CRSP, and Wall Street Journal databases, we test whether borrower abnormal returns are related to bank, borrower, deal, and/or event characteristics during the duration of the loan. We demonstrate that borrower abnormal returns are related to mid-loan bank events, defined as an event resulting in bank abnormal returns beyond a specified threshold. The results suggest that borrowers are affected by bank events mid-loan, even when the event is not directly related to bank default.

Recent studies on the use of private, non-bank, debt have given conflicting results. Instead of a fixed order of preference between various choices of debt as suggested by previous studies, this study postulates that there is a life cycle of debt choice, and as firms move through the cycle, their preferences change. For stable, mature firms, when given a choice, non-bank private debt would fall in between the two extremes of bank debt and public debt. We provide empirical as well as anecdotal evidence from the trade press to support this view. We jointly model the decision to choose a debt source as well as the amount of debt on data from a current database to focus on the “intentional” change in debt levels, rather than those due to unintentional changes. We find that there are significant interdependencies between the decision to borrow from a particular source, as well as the amount of loan, and that taxes, as well as lender reputation, degree of renegotiability and financial flexibility required by the borrower, are key factors that influence the choice of private debt source.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the quality of the credit process is sensitive to reaching a particular threshold level of non-performing loans (NPLs) and, more importantly, whether higher NPLs ratios could make the monitoring activity ineffective.

The empirical design is composed of two steps: in the first step, the authors introduce a monitoring performance indicator (MPI) of the credit process by combining the non-parametric technique Data Envelopment Analysis with some financial ratios adopted as input and output variables. As second step, the authors apply a threshold panel regression model to a sample of 298 Italian banks, over the time period 2006–2014, and the authors investigate whether the quality of the credit process is sensitive to reaching a particular threshold level of NPLs.

This paper finds that, first, when the NPLs ratio remains below the threshold value estimated endogenously, an increase in the quality of monitoring has a positive impact on the NPLs ratio. Second, if the NPLs ratio exceeds the estimated threshold, the relationship between the NPLs ratio and quality of monitoring assumes a positive value and is statistically significant.

Due to the lack of data, the investigation of NPLs in the Italian industry across loan types combined with the monitoring effort by banks management was not possible. The authors plan to investigate this topic in future studies.

The identification of the threshold has a double operational valence. The first regards the Supervisory Authority, the threshold approach could be used as an early warning in order to introduce active control strategies based on the additional information requested or by on-site inspections. The second implication is highlighted in relation to the individual banks, the monitoring of credit control quality, if objective and comparable, could facilitate the emergence of best practices among banks.

A high NPLs ratio requires greater loan provisions, which reduces capital resources available for lending, and dents bank profitability. Moreover, structural weaknesses on banks’ balance sheets still persist particularly in relation to the inadequate internal governance structures. This means that bank management must able to recognise in advance early warning signals by providing prudent measurement together with an in-depth valuation of loans portfolio.

The originality of the paper is twofold: the authors introduce a new proxy of credit monitoring, called MPI; the authors provide an empirical proof of the Diamond’s (1991) economic intuition: for riskier borrowers, the monitoring activity is an inappropriate instrument depending on the bad reputational quality of borrowers.

This chapter examines the effect of creditors’ monitoring role on the profitability of firm acquisitions. We use the shares retained by the lead arranger of a syndicated loan as a proxy for monitoring level. We find that acquirer announcement returns are positively related to the shares retained by the lead arranger. The effect of the lead arranger’s shares on the acquirer’s return becomes pronounced in cash acquisition deals, and when there exist financial covenants. Our results suggest that lead arrangers are important not only for monitoring loans but also for successful acquisitions by borrowers. An important policy implication of the main findings of this chapter on bank monitoring is that policy makers should design financial covenants to improve the efficiency of monitoring activities by lead arranging banks in syndicated bank loan deals.

From 1982 to 1987, several Third World borrowers defaulted on their loans to U.S. creditor banks. The defaults resulted in the deterioration of the quality of loan assets held by the banks. The purpose of this study is to analyze the market reaction to a series of sovereign debt defaults. Specifically, we analyze eight events during the six year period to find out how the market reaction changed from one event to the next. Standard residual analysis and volatility tests are applied to a sample of 75 banks common to all eight events. The speed of adjustment to the sequential events indicates that with each event, the market becomes better informed and there is evidence of market learning. New SEC regulations requiring banks to disclose significant exposures to foreign borrowers and increasing awareness about the quality of the loan portfolio of banks helped in the market correctly evaluating the effects of defaults on the lenders.

The purpose of this paper is to examine stock market reactions and liquidity effects following the first bank loan announcement of zero-leverage firms.

The authors use an event studies methodology in both a univariate and multivariate framework. The authors also use regression analysis.

Using a sample of 96 zero-leverage firms listed on the FTSE 350 index over the time period of 2000–2015, the authors find evidence of a significant and permanent stock price increase as a result of the initial debt announcement. The loan announcement results in a sustained increase in trading volume and liquidity. This improvement continues to persist once the authors control for stock price and trading volume effects in both the short and long run. Furthermore, the authors examine the spread decomposition around the same period, and discover the adverse selection of the bid–ask spread is significantly related to the initial bank loan announcement.

The results can be attributed to the information cost/liquidity hypothesis, suggesting that investors demand a lower premium for trading stocks with more available information.

This is the first paper to look at multiple industries, more than one loan and information asymmetry effects.

We study institutional investors’ influence on the use of related party transactions (RPTs) in China. We test the significance of potential factors in the cross-sectional regression analysis of the amount of RPTs reported by Chinese listed companies. We also analyze intraday trading activities and stock prices in days around public announcements of RPTs. Our findings suggest that institutional investors do not have a significant influence on Chinese firms’ usage of RPTs but they react to RPT announcements through buying or selling shares.

This paper seeks to examine whether the market values the monitoring activity undertaken by a quality bank in the presence of a credit rating agency. Specifically, the question is asked whether the quality of a lead lending bank influences a market reaction to adverse rating announcements concerning its borrowers.

The event study methodology and various bank quality proxies (size, growth rate in assets, profitability, capital ratio, bank's credit rating, and ownership) are used to examine the market reaction when a borrower's bank loan rating is placed with negative implication or is downgraded.

Firms which are certified and monitored by high‐quality banks are less susceptible to negative market reactions when adverse rating announcements are made.

The findings indicate high‐quality lending banks sustain investors' confidence in their borrowers in the face of deteriorating news. The paper argues that investors and borrowers value monitoring from a high‐quality bank, which is an implication of a bank having access to private information about its borrowers.

This paper aims to empirically analyze the success of European bank mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by an analysis of the shareholder value implications of stock market reactions to announced and canceled M&As in the period from 1999 to 2015.

The analysis of a sample of 467 announced and 54 canceled European bank M&As is conducted using event study methodology. The determinants of the shareholder value creations in M&A are observed in cross-sectional regressions. The likelihood of M&As being canceled is estimated in logit regressions.

The paper finds that European bank M&As have not been successful in terms of shareholder value creation for acquiring banks, whereas targets experienced significant value gains. Abnormal returns for bidders and targets exhibit the same characteristics upon the announcement of M&As that are canceled at a later date, whereas the results for transaction cancelations deviate. Targets experience negative abnormal returns at a larger size than upon the transaction announcement. The findings for bidders are striking, as they destroy shareholder value upon the transaction cancelation, also, consequently they suffer twice. In particular, banks with higher profitability, higher efficiency and lower liquidity experience negative abnormal returns around the announcement dates. Negative abnormal returns prior to the transaction announcement and provision for loan losses increase significantly the likelihood of M&A cancelation.

This paper contributes to the literature expanding existing analyses to the shareholder value implications of canceled European bank M&As in a 17-year long time period. The findings reveal the destructive characteristics of canceled bank M&As and provide innovative insights into European capital market reaction to canceled M&As.