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The paper aims to highlight differences in bank performance based on state politics during the onset of the Covid pandemic. The response to Covid pandemic created an unusual opportunity for an investigation of how politics impacts banking due to the initial response to the pandemic being heavily impacted by political affiliation states' governors and dominant parties in state legislatures. Previous research looked at impact of elections on the federal level (both executive and legislative branches) on bank risk and performance. The response to the Covid pandemic in 2020 allows for an investigation on how political influence on the state level impacted banks performance.

The Covid pandemic was an unexpected storm that entered the United States with a vengeance in 2020, taking countless lives and ravaging the economic landscape. The response to the pandemic quickly took a political spin as republican governors showed greater reluctance to shutter business activity in hopes of slowing down the spread of the virus than their democratic counterparts. This paper examines the impact of the two Americas created along the lines of political influence as it impacted bank performance over four-quarters beginning with the fourth quarter of 2019. All US banks are split into groups based on the political affiliation of state governors and the dominant party in state legislatures to measure impact of politics on bank performance and risk.

This research finds that banks operating in states with republican governors produced greater profits and exhibited higher liquidity levels. The same results held for banks in states where both the governorship and the legislature were controlled by republicans versus banks in states where both the governor and the legislature were democratic. Interestingly, the findings present a reversal when examining banks in states led by republican governors and democratic legislatures versus banks in states with democratic governors and republican legislatures. In those instances of mixed leadership, banks in states with democratic governors tend to show greater profits, greater liquidity while demonstrating lower asset quality.

A paper published in Managerial Finance in 2018 discussed the impact of the parties in control of the White house and the legislative branch on bank performance and risk. There have been no studies, to the author’s knowledge, that look at how states' political leadership (gubernatorial and legislative) impact on bank performance. Because the response to the Covid pandemic became a politically polarized issue, the onset of the crisis allowed for measurement of how different responses by republican and democratic state leadership impacted bank performance and risk.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an account of banking scandals in relation to corporate governance (CG) failures in an emerging economy, arguing that Anglo-American ideas of CG are misplaced in traditional settings.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders. Observations of annual general meetings (AGMs) and the personal working experience of one of the researchers, along with documentation, provided triangulating data on CG practices.

The authors have found that both of the banks studied had adopted CG practices contrary to the expectations of the Sri Lankan CG codes. Key features of CG practices that emerged from their investigations of these two scandals are ineffectual central bank regulations, familial boards of directors, ceremonial board meetings, biased auditing practices and manipulative AGMs, relying on traditional structures of accountability centred around families, kin and social networks.

The authors argue, drawing on Weber (1958, 1961, 1968, 1978), that the traditionalist culture mediates the process of rationality in bank governance codes and regulatory frameworks Therefore, practices fall far short of expectations.

The paper builds on the extended critique of shareholder-centric CG models and their transferability to alien contexts. It contributes to the CG studies calling for more appreciation of the need to move beyond the conventional view of CG problems as simply down to conflicts of interests. The authors complement and advance the decoupling debate in CG studies drawing on the Weberian notion of traditionalism.

Austrian Business Cycle theory (ABCT) has lately drawn increased attention as a result of its ability to explain the US financial crisis of 2007–2009. However, its explanatory power is questioned by the Canadian experience of the crisis, where a similarly loose monetary policy to the United States did not give rise to a similarly calamitous outcome. Accounting for this difference points to the necessity of elaborating the political element already contained in ABCT. This task of political science is most fruitfully done by focusing on the regime, that is, the distribution of the state’s offices and powers. These shape the incentives and ideals that move political action toward the financial sector. Though both Canada and the United States have democratic regimes, their origins and historical development have caused these to vary in significant ways. These variances largely clarify why the negative consequences of easy money predicted by ABCT were less pronounced in Canada than the United States.

The supervisory authority of the Bank of England derives from tradition and statute. The interplay of these two factors can be analysed by applying a formalist/anti‐formalist model. In this paper this has been developed to explain the regulatory cycle and the reasons why anti‐formalism has been adopted. Evidence of recent events in the banking industry has been used to support the argument and explain the actions of the Bank of England.

The paper aims to offer an exploration of the Banking Act 1987 which was passed following the failure of Johnson Matthey Bankers (JMB) in 1984. This Act extended the role of auditors in banking supervision by removing traditional confidentiality constraints and created a new role of “reporting accountant”. The paper seeks to examine the origin and development of these new reporting roles. In addition, the paper considers the extent to which the findings of this historical investigation might contribute to current debates on the role of auditors in banking supervision.

The paper draws on official documents, personal accounts of individuals responsible for dealing with the JMB crisis, and semi‐structured interviews conducted with audit partners and banking supervisors who had direct experience of implementing the supervisory reforms instituted under the Banking Act 1987. Power's explanatory schema of controversy, closure and credibility is adopted as a framework for the analysis of documentary sources and interview data.

The failure of JMB generated sufficient controversy so as to require reform of the system of banking supervision. The paper shows that JMB was a controversy since it disturbed what went before and carried with it sufficient allies for change. To achieve closure of the controversy, agreement by key actors about changes to the nature of the role of auditors was required to ensure legitimacy for the reforms. Backstage work undertaken by the auditing profession and the Bank of England provided the necessary credibility to renormalise practice around the new supervisory arrangements.

The paper develops Power's schema which is then employed to analyse the emergence of the new role of reporting accountant and extended role for auditors in UK banking supervision. The paper provides empirical evidence on the processes of controversy, closure and credibility that help to ensure the legitimacy of accounting and auditing change.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate conceptualizations of Europeanization, the difficulties this creates when assessing the impacts of the European Union (EU) on member states and the influence member states have on the EU policy‐making processes. There are also problems when considering questions regarding the basis of Europeanization in terms of its relationships with globalization, governance, institutionalization, polity, politics and policy.

Different conceptualizations of Europeanization concentrate on distinct methodological positions and whether Europeanization may best be understood as “situation” or “process”. Indeed, difficulties are further exacerbated when identifying the extent that drivers for change at the EU and domestic level involved Europeanization, domestication, globalization and/or European integration. Meso theory identifies “process” and substantive theory “situation” in terms of downloading (En1), up‐loading (En2) and cross‐loading (En3). Each of these conceptualizations allow “situations” where empirical reliability could be made explicit from a particular perspective.

This paper investigates and assesses the Europeanization of UK financial services and provides a conceptualization of Europeanization as both meso (middle range) and substantive theory. By breaking down meso theory into substantive theories (up‐loading, downloading and cross‐loading) the analysis attempts to clarify the interaction between Europeanization, globalization and domestication in relation to impacts on UK financial services regulation. Following an assessment of UK financial services in general, this paper concentrates on the concept of “competent authority” and how the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) displays attributes outlined in the directives. Through an analysis of the Third Life Assurance Directive, Second Banking Directive and FSA this paper identifies a number of issues relating to how the EU responded to sector demands and how Europeanization is actualized through domestic response.

Europeanization indicates a continual interaction or dialectic between the uniformity of the EU and the diversity of the individual member states. The process involves interaction between global, domestic and European variables with the European dimension in relation to domestic interpretation providing a mechanism whereby dominant economic global factors can be diminished or enabled.

Globalisation has influenced many countries, over the last few decades with financial globalisation and liberalisation bringing regulatory reforms in the banking sector. Thus, this study aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the influence of globalisation on Islamic and conventional bank productivity in Southeast Asia.

The sample comprised 155 banks (23 Islamic and 132 conventional) from 4 countries from 2008 to 2017. Panel data techniques will be used, together with data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based Malmquist productivity index (MPI), to investigate the impact of chosen main determinants on bank productivity. A panel regression analysis will be performed after generating the productivity index from the DEA-based MPI frontier.

According to the findings, Islamic banks are statistically significantly more productive than conventional banks, and the findings of the t-test are corroborated by the findings of nonparametric tests. Furthermore, the findings of the panel regression model reveal that bank specific factors and macroeconomic variables are significant determinants to bank productivity. Surprisingly, the findings also show that the influence of social globalisation elements tends to be negatively related to conventional bank productivity.

This study adds to the existing literature by bridging the globalisation gap in the productivity of the dual banking industry, particularly in the specific context of Southeast Asia, given that the area is representative of Islamic and finance globally.

In the early 1980s Tesco had provisionally agreed plans with the property developer, Provincial Properties Wales, to build a new store in Barry. Michael Hepker, the owner of Ravensbury Investments, was keen to buy into the project and persuaded Johnson Matthey Bankers (JMB) to lend him the capital to purchase Provincial Properties. JMB were to have the store as security for the loan. Unfortunately, planning permission for the building was refused, but, if accusations subsequently made in the House of Commons are to be believed, this fact was never disclosed to JMB. The bank never thought to check on the progress of the building work, so it remained blissfully unaware that its loan was unsecured. At the same time, JMB was lending ever increasing amounts to another client, who was later convicted of fraud in New York in October 1994. Together these two concentrated exposures exhausted JMB's capital base, so that when repayments started to dry up the bank faced collapse. The Bank of England (the Bank), as lender of last resort and UK supervisor of the banking industry, became concerned because JMB was regarded as playing a key role in maintaining the UK's central position in the international gold bullion market. The Bank feared a run on gold deposits which might have spread to the ordinary and unconnected deposit‐taking industry and perhaps led to a currency crisis. The markets were already edgy after the collapse of Continental Illinois National Bank in the USA, which had prompted a run on the dollar, and so the Bank believed it might have been difficult to persuade the markets that JMB's problems were confined to its lending business only. As a result of the JMB debacle, Barry never got its Tesco's and the Bank of England found itself obliged to rescue JMB using money from the government and City institutions.

The deregulation of international banking and financial markets has raised a number of concerns about their fragility and risk of collapse through systemic contagion. A large amount of research has been conducted to explore policy solutions to this problem. However, there is little work in the literature which attempts to understand the various components and dimensions of systemic risk. This paper develops a comprehensive understanding of systemic risk, by using the theoretical framework provided by Perrow in his seminal book, ‘Normal Accidents’. It elaborates and exposes three of the central components — risk, complexity and coupling, which together make the modern global financial system significantly fragile. It is hoped that this understanding will create a common basis for future discussions of systemic risk and also help towards developing policy reforms.