The 2008 global crisis, and the European sovereign debt crisis that follow it, originated, among other consequences, a general mistrust in financial institutions. This situation encourages the debate on the role of co-operative banks within a fairer society and their social responsibility as a key in the economic recovery, namely in the south European countries. The co-operative banking sector remains poorly understood and its specific governance challenges remain largely unexplored. The research included in this thesis aims to improve knowledge of the conduct and performance of the co-operative banks, and its findings should support the decision making process by members and management, mainly in terms of governance model. Thus, the main objective of this research is to analyse, both theoretically and empirically, the governance and financial robustness of co-operative banks, taking as a reference the Portuguese agricultural credit co-operatives (CCAM) and their integrated system (SICAM). Specifically, the thesis is structured in order to answer the following questions: (1) What are the economic bases of co-operative banks?; (2) How does a particular regulatory framework affect co-operative banking activity?; (3) What is the impact of the different governance mechanisms of co-operative banks on control management?; and (4) What are the explanatory factors of Portuguese co-operative bank failures? Besides the Introduction (Chapter 1) and the Conclusions (Chapter 6)...

Este trabalho propôs-se a responder se existem indícios suficientes para se afirmar que os bancos comerciais no Brasil praticam alguma modalidade de gerenciamento de resultados. Para tanto, foi verificado se os bancos comerciais selecionados - instituições líderes dos vinte maiores conglomerados bancários brasileiros - utilizaram os ágios em investimentos em controladas e coligadas, as operações com títulos e valores mobiliários, as provisões para operações de crédito ou os passivos contingentes para gerenciar seus resultados. Dois dos três bancos que possuíam ágios em investimentos em controladas e coligadas efetivamente utilizaram sua amortização para gerenciar seus resultados. Cinqüenta e cinco por cento dos bancos selecionados utilizaram a classificação dos títulos e valores mobiliários para praticar o gerenciamento de resultados. Com relação à provisão para operações de crédito, seis bancos usaram-na para gerenciar seus resultados, outros seis bancos não a usaram e para cinco bancos os resultados foram inconclusivos. Os resultados também foram inconclusivos para os passivos contingentes.; This thesis purpose is to detect if there are enough signs to assure that Brazilian commercial banks practice any kind of earnings management. For that...

Master in International Management / JEL Classification: E44 G18; The five-year transitional period after China’s entry into WTO has expired. To fulfil her promise of opening up the financial service market, China has cancelled all the restrictions on the scope of business and regional access for foreign-funded banks. Although the State Council has enacted the recently revised «Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on the Administration of Foreign-funded Banks» and the «Rules for Implementing the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Administration of Foreign-funded Banks» as the main legal document on regulating foreign-funded banks, and, as obvious, flaw is unavoidable. And we must improve the supervisory legal system of foreign-funded banks in China to dissolve the risk arising by the entry of foreign-funded banks. This research work analyses and discuss the practical impact of the current legislation for supervision of foreign-capital banks, supervision of market access of foreign-capital banks, the supervision on RMB business management in foreign capital banks and the legal system for internal control of foreign banks. In the end of the dissertation, the improvement towards the perfection supervision of the foreign banks in PRC will be emphasized with respect to the new opening situation.; O período de transição concedido à República Popular da China (RPC) na sua admissão na Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC) já caducara. Segundo os compromissos de admissão na OMC...

A large share of dollar-denominated lending is done by non-U.S. banks, particularly European banks. We present a model in which such banks cut dollar lending more than euro lending in response to a shock to their credit quality. Because these banks rely on wholesale dollar funding, while raising more of their euro funding through insured retail deposits, the shock leads to a greater withdrawal of dollar funding. Banks can borrow in euros and swap into dollars to make up for the dollar shortfall, but this may lead to violations of covered interest parity (CIP) when there is limited capital to take the other side of the swap trade. In this case, synthetic dollar borrowing becomes expensive, which causes cuts in dollar lending. We test the model in the context of the Eurozone sovereign crisis, which escalated in the second half of 2011 and resulted in U.S. money-market funds sharply reducing the funding provided to European banks. Coincident with the contraction in dollar funding, there were significant violations of euro-dollar CIP. Moreover, dollar lending by Eurozone banks fell relative to their euro lending in both the U.S. and Europe; this was not the case for U.S. global banks. Finally, European banks that were more reliant on money funds experienced bigger declines in dollar lending.

Historically, development banks have been an important instrument of governments to promote economic growth by providing credit and a wide range of advisory and capacity building programs to households, small and medium enterprises, and even large private corporations, whose financial needs are not sufficiently served by private commercial banks or local capital markets. During the current financial crisis, most development banks in Latin America, followed by Asia, Africa, and Europe, have assumed a countercyclical role by scaling up their lending operations exactly when private banks experienced temporary difficulties in granting credit to the private sector. Despite the importance of development banks during crisis and non-crisis periods, little is known about them. This survey examines how development banks operate, what their policy mandates are, what financial services they offer, which type of clients they target, how they are regulated and supervised, what business models they have adopted, what governance framework they have...

Past performance of development banks, has generally been considered poor and the value of state ownership questioned. There are few institutions that achieve the optimum balance of effectively addressing a policy objective while being financially sustainable. Following the financial crisis, there is a renewed interest in the role development banks can play in weathering the crisis. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the lessons learned following the financial crisis and to present some of the best practices in development banking so that policy makers can be better informed should they be considering how to build strong state financial institutions to address current and future needs in their respective countries.

In Middle East and North Africa (MENA), state banks played a less important role in the recovery as compared to several countries in Latin America and South Asia, as well as China, where state banks played a counter-cyclical role. When private banks started circumscribing credit, state banks stepped in. The impact of this counter-cyclical role has been widely acknowledged. For example, a recent issue in the economist contained a lengthy article on emerging country banking, acknowledging how state banks had played an important counter-cyclical role in many emerging countries. Given this recent experience, some MENA countries may decide to retain an important role for state banks, including reformist countries such as Egypt and Tunisia that had been privatizing state banks and allowing the entry of foreign banks over the last decade.

This study describes the business and risk management practices that banks use to serve small and medium enterprises (SMEs). To do so, we use recently collected evidence from Argentina and Chile for a significant number of banks in each country, gathered through on-site meetings, a tabulated questionnaire, and a detailed data request. We find that banks are setting up separate departments to serve the segment, targeting many SMEs from all economic sectors and geographic regions. Banks use relationship managers to seek out new clients. Risk management and loan approval is separate from sales, mostly centralized, but not largely automated. Knowing the client is still crucial to minimize risks. Overall, the patterns we uncover suggest that banks are in the middle of an on-going learning process, by which they are developing the structure to deal with SMEs in a sustainable basis over the coming years.

The author examines the corporate governance of banks. When banks efficiently mobilize and allocate funds, this lowers the cost of capital to firms, boosts capital formation, and stimulates productivity growth. So, weak governance of banks reverberates throughout the economy with negative ramifications for economic development. After reviewing the major governance concepts for corporations in general, the author discusses two special attributes of banks that make them special in practice: greater opaqueness than other industries and greater government regulation. These attributes weaken many traditional governance mechanisms. Next, he reviews emerging evidence on which government policies enhance the governance of banks and draws tentative policy lessons. In sum, existing work suggests that it is important to strengthen the ability and incentives of private investors to exert governance over banks rather than to rely excessively on government regulators. These conclusions, however, are particularly tentative because more research is needed on how legal...

This note reviews state-owned banks in Belarus and offers recommendations on how to strengthen them. It covers the Belarusbank, Belagroprombank, Belinvestbank, and Paritetbank (the public banks), and the recently established Development Bank of Belarus (DBB). Recommendations focus on corporate governance, funding, ownership function, mandate, lending models, and regulation and supervision. The note is based on information provided by the public banks, the Ministry of Finance, and the NBRB. However, due to their unavailability, the team did not hold meetings with the DBB and the Ministry of Economy. Thus, the analyses concerning the DBB are based on the review of its law as well as on discussions with the Ministry of Finance and the NBRB. The note is organized as follows: after this introduction, section two presents an overview of the public banks in Belarus and the role that they play in the local economy; section three discusses the details of Lending under Government Programs (LGP) and the importance for the public banks of the funding attached to these programs; section four analyzes the key features of the DBB...

This paper finds that lending by state banks is less procyclical than lending by private banks, especially in countries with good governance. Lending by state banks in high-income countries is even countercyclical. On the liability side, state banks expand potentially unstable non-deposit liabilities relatively little during booms, especially in countries with good governance. Public banks also report loan non-performance more evenly over the business cycle. Overall the results of the analysis suggest that state banks can play a useful role in stabilizing credit over the business cycle as well as during periods of financial instability. However, the track record of state banks in credit allocation remains quite poor, questioning the wisdom of using state banks as a short-term countercyclical tool.

The tax exemptions granted to financial institutions like Subchapter S banks and credit unions cost billions of dollars to the government. The dissertation investigates the effect of tax exemption on competitiveness, performance and portfolio risk of credit unions and Subchapter S banks. The methodologies include difference in differences estimation, univariate and multivariate analysis. The first essay entitled “The tax exemption to Subchapter S banks: who gets the benefit?” investigates the effect of tax exemption to Subchapter S banks on stakeholders and on job creation. Specifically, we investigate the effect of adoption of Subchapter S status on the four stakeholders of the banks: the customers of the bank, the employees of the bank, the owners of the bank and the government. The results indicate that the tax exemptions to Subchapter S banks do not create new jobs, and that the owners of the bank are the sole beneficiary of the tax exemptions since there is a significant increase in bank’s return on equity after it adopts the Subchapter S status. The second essay entitled “A comparison of credit unions and Subchapter S banks: who shares higher tax benefits with customers?” examines whether credit unions are doing a better job of sharing the tax benefit with its customers. The results indicate that the credit union members do not receive the benefit in terms of lower loan rates...

Research Objectives: This thesis studied bank risk taking behaviour with regards to capital and asset portfolio adjustments. It also evaluated the impact of economic uncertainty and capital regulations on banks’ risk taking behaviour. There were two objectives of this thesis. The first objective was to investigate the impact of adverse shocks in the economy on a bank’s decisions regarding capital and asset portfolio management. The second objective was to examine the interrelationship between decisions on capital and asset portfolios. Further, the impact of economic uncertainty and changes in capital regulations on this relationship was also examined. This thesis was motivated by several issues. First, even though supervisory authorities and banks are aware of the importance of capital in the prevention of bank failures, empirical studies are inconclusive on the effectiveness of capital regulations in controlling bank risk taking behaviour. Second, the contradictory conclusions in current literature regarding the effectiveness of capital regulations in controlling bank risk taking attitudes do not incorporate economic shocks. Therefore, the existing studies do not examine the impact of economic uncertainty on capital and portfolio risk decisions...

Although there is an increasing research interest in banking capital requirements, the impact of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) banking regulation on Chinese commercial banks’ behaviors has not been fully explored. Even though CBRC banking regulation has tremendously improved the capital adequacy ratio, on average, for Chinese commercial banks in recent years, the question of whether and how different types of banks in China have reacted to constraints placed by the regulator on their capital has not been empirically tested in the literature for Chinese cases. This overarching research problem, which forms the foundation of this doctoral research project, gives rise to three important research questions. First, do different types of banks in China react differently to capital requirements in terms of capital adequacy level, i.e. do state-owned banks, joint-equity banks, local banks, and foreign banks behave the same in their capital ratio when adhering to changes in capital requirements? Second, do Chinese banks differ in their ability to adjust risk, i.e. do different types of banks simultaneously adjust their capital and risk due to the influence of binding capital requirements? Third, do corporate governance factors jointly work with banking regulation in explaining Chinese banks’ risk behaviors...

The need for sound governance of banks worldwide has never been stronger. After the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, spectacular bank failures, whether caused by greed, incompetence, or indifference, are still occurring. This guide is intended mainly for three groups of readers: (i) new directors with experience in banking; (ii) directors who understand governance, but have no experience in banking; and (iii) new directors who have no experience of either banking or being a director. It is mainly an introduction for the directors of non-complex banks, whose main business is to take deposits and provide loans, and is not designed for the directors of large, complex banks or investment banks operating in global capital markets and dealing with complex corporate structures. We hope, however, that even relatively experienced directors of banks, and those who work with them, may find the book a useful refresher. Main topics discussed in the Guidance are: 1) where banks fit in the corporate governance framework; 2) the unique role of banks governing risk; 3) Board structures and directors' duties; and 4) effective Board decision making. Since the late Jonathan Charkham CBE wrote the first edition of this Guidance book in 2003...

For an international sample of banks, the authors construct measures of a bank's absolute size and its systemic size defined as size relative to the national economy. They examine how a bank's risk and return, its activity mix and funding strategy, and the extent to which it faces market discipline depend on both size measures. Although absolute size presents banks with a trade-off between risk and return, systemic size is an unmitigated bad, reducing return without a reduction in risk. Despite too-big-to-fail subsidies, the analysis finds that systemically large banks are subject to greater market discipline as evidenced by a higher sensitivity of their funding costs to risk proxies, suggesting that they are often too big to save. The finding that a bank's interest cost tends to rise with its systemic size can also in part explain why a bank's rate of return on assets tends to decline with systemic size. Overall, the results cast doubt on the need to have systemically large banks. Bank growth has not been in the interest of bank shareholders in small countries...

The authors examine the factors that influence banks' type of organizational form when operating in foreign markets using an original database of the branches and subsidiaries in Latin America and Eastern Europe of the top 100 international banks. They find that regulation, taxation, the degree of desired penetration in the local market, and host-country economic and political risks matter. Banks are more likely to operate as branches in countries that have higher corporate taxes and when they face lower regulatory restrictions on bank entry, in general, and on foreign branches, in particular. Subsidiaries are the preferred organizational form by banks that seek to penetrate the local market establishing large and mostly retail operations. Finally, there is evidence that economic and political risks have opposite effects on the type of organizational form, suggesting that legal differences in the degree of parent bank responsibility vis-à-vis branches and subsidiaries under different risk scenarios play an important role in the kind of operations international banks maintain overseas

Many of the distortions in poorly performing economies do not originate in the banking sector, but where state banks still control a large share of the resources in the banking system, they continue to pose a risk to macroeconomic and fiscal stability. State banks are typically vehicles for patronage that worsen the prospects for competitive market development. Alternatively, these state banks can be ineffective shells that fail to perform a useful intermediation role once the government imposes effective hard budget constraints and a modern supervisory system. The most problematic state banks have been agricultural and industrial banks, whose original role was to finance state farms and industrial enterprises that employed large numbers of people and served as the backbone of the socialist economic mode. Banks now show stronger growth in deposits and capital in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics, suggesting that these countries have put into place structures that have helped to restore confidence in banking systems among creditors...

Deteriorating public finances around the world raise doubts about countries' abilities to bail out their largest banks. For an international sample of banks, this paper investigates the impact of government indebtedness and deficits on bank stock prices and credit default swap spreads. Overall, bank stock prices reflect a negative capitalization of government debt and they respond negatively to deficits. The authors present evidence that in 2008 systemically large banks saw a reduction in their market valuation in countries running large fiscal deficits. Furthermore, the change in bank credit default swap spreads in 2008 relative to 2007 reflects countries' deterioration of public deficits. The results of the analysis suggest that some systemically important banks can increase their value by downsizing or splitting up, as they have become too big to save, potentially reversing the trend to ever larger banks. The paper also documents that a smaller proportion of banks are systemically important -- relative to gross domestic product -- in 2008 than in the two previous years...

Dissertation submitted as partial requirement for the conferral of Master of Science in Business Administration / JEL Classification: G2; P13; Purpose: This dissertation aims to present the Portuguese Citizens trust level on the existing banks, recognizing their criteria when choosing banks. The purpose is to promote the discussion on the type of banks citizens would like to have. It also contributes to literature regarding financial crisis consequences on trust and providing arguments on the potential relevance of Cooperative banks. Method: The author uses quantitative method. Data is gathered by surveys and analyzed on SPSS - Multi Correspondence and Chi-Square Analysis. Findings: The research concludes that Portuguese Citizens are not trusting on the existent banks, since they think banks aren’t acting correctly. Citizens are also concerned with the well-being promotion that banks create rather than profit maximization. Research limitations: This research is based on the existing literature and on data gathered by telephone to 600 citizens. To understand some issues, developing qualitative research (focus groups and interviews) could be relevant. Practical implications: With financial crisis context and its consequences on trust level...