Corporate environmental assessment by a bank lender : a social constructionist perspective

Over the last decade evidence has emerged which suggests that lenders are considering environmental impact of corporate borrowers as part of their lending decisions. Environmental consideration by lenders may considerably influence the level of financial support available for economic growth and environmemntal management. The primary aim of this research project is to examine the development and use of corporate environmental assessment techniques by members of a commercial lending bank. The research will build upon previous findings that highlight the influences of culture upon bank members perception of environmental credit risks. Specific emphasis will be placed on evaluating the role of mechanisms for the communiaction of bank policy. These will be analysed to find out how and why corporate environmental performance considerations shape the lending process. Research will be undertaken in the form of a case study facilitated by Lloyds TSB Group plc. Analysis will centre on an evaluation of the rationalities for environmental assessment displayed by bank members and their justification for the application of specific environemnatal assessment techniques. The findings are expected to be of direct practical benefit to bank lending officers and others interested in lending processes and/or corporate environmental assessment techniques

Organisational Control an English Commercial Bank Lending to Industry in the decades before Wowrld War I

Editada en la Fundación Empresa PúblicaLos años 1880-1914 fueron de crecimiento institucional y de sistemática consolidación en el sector bancario inglés. A principios del siglo XIX se produjeron una serie de crisis que afectaron seriamente a los bancos de Inglaterra y Gales. Una de sus consecuencias fue generar preocupación sobre la liquidez de los bancos, planteándose simultáneamente interrogantes sobre la adecuada composición de los créditos al sector privado. El artículo examina los procedimientos utilizados por los bancos para minimizar los riesgos y estudia algunos aspectos de las prácticas crediticias que se aplicaron en las regiones más industrializadas de Gran Bretaña. En la primera parte se resume la organización y los métodos de control adoptados por las principales sociedades anónimas bancarias. La segunda presenta un esquema para la evaluación y seguimiento de los créditos. Y la tercera analiza las prácticas de los bancos en sus préstamos al sector industrial.The years 1880-1914 were years of institutional growth and systemic consolidation for English banks. In the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century there had been a number of crises which had affected the banks of England and Wales. On effect was to raise anxieties about the liquidity of bank balance sheets, including fundamental questions about the composition of lending to the private sector. In particular, the paper discusses the procedures used by the banks to minimise risk and examines some aspects of actual lending practice as it applied to the industrial regions of Britain. There are three parís to the paper. The fírst briefly summarises the organisational and control structures that were introduced by the large joint-stock banks to standardise lending at their numerous branches. The second section introduces a schema íot the assessment and monitoring of loans, and the third discusses some of the banks' pre-1914 practices with regard to loans to industry.Publicad

The Financial Services Authority:A Model of Improved Accountability?

Prior to the adoption of the FSA (Financial Services Authority) model, supervision of UK banks was carried out by the Bank of England. Although the Bank of England's informal involvement in bank supervision dates back to the mid nineteenth century, it was only in 1979 that it acquired formal powers to grant or refuse authorization to carry out banking business in the UK. Events such as the Secondary Banking Crisis of 1973-74 and the Banking Coordination Directive of 1977 resulted in legislative changes in the form of the Banking Act 1979. Bank failures through the following years then resulted in changes to the legislative framework. This article looks into the claim that the FSA model has improved in terms of accountability in comparison to its predecessor, the Bank of England. It considers the impact the FSA has made on the financial services sector and on certain legislation since its introduction. Through a comparison with the Bank of England, previous and present legislation, reports and other sources, an assessment is made as to whether the FSA provides more accountability. Evidence provided here supports the conclusion that the FSA is both equipped with better accountability mechanisms and executes its functions in a more accountable way than its predecessor

Estimating liquidity risk using the exposure-based cash-flow-at-risk approach: an application to the UK banking sector

This paper uses a relatively new quantitative model for estimating UK banks' liquidity risk. The model is called the exposure-based cash-flow-at-risk (CFaR) model, which not only measures a bank's liquidity risk tolerance but also helps to improve liquidity risk management through the provision of additional risk exposure information. Using data for the period 1997–2010, we provide evidence that there is variable funding pressure across the UK banking industry, which is forecasted to be slightly illiquid with a small amount of expected cash outflow (i.e. £0.06 billion) in 2011. In our sample of the six biggest UK banks, only the HSBC maintains positive CFaR with 95% confidence, which means that there is only a 5% chance that HSBC's cash flow will drop below £0.67 billion by the end of 2011. RBS is expected to face the largest liquidity risk with a 5% chance that the bank will face a cash outflow that year in excess of £40.29 billion. Our estimates also suggest Lloyds TSB's cash flow is the most volatile of the six biggest UK banks, because it has the biggest deviation between its downside cash flow (i.e. CFaR) and expected cash flow

Compensating Competitors or Restoring Competition? EC Regulation of State Aid for Banks during the Crisis

We contrast the theory underpinning state aid for failing banks with that for failing firms in the real sector, and find that this should justify a different treatment for banks under Article 107. For example, there is little justification for measures to compensate rivals when the bank has been saved for reasons of systemic stability. We find that the formal guidance on bank restructuring aid takes insufficient notice of this. In four detailed case studies, we also find a number of inconsistencies with respect to size of subsidy, sustainability of divestitures or treatment of mergers. We conclude that while the Commission provided a useful constraint in the midst of a crisis of unprecedented scale and complexity, its approach could have been improved by focusing more closely on the fundamental justification of state aid in each case (i.e. the counterfactual)

Estimating Liquidity Risk Using The Exposure-Based Cash-Flow-at-Risk Approach: An Application To the UK Banking Sector

This paper uses a relatively new quantitative model for estimating UK banks' liquidity risk. The model is called the Exposure-Based Cash-Flow-at-Risk (CFaR) model, which not only measures a bank's liquidity risk tolerance, but also helps to improve liquidity risk management through the provision of additional risk exposure information. Using data for the period 1997-2010, we provide evidence that there is variable funding pressure across the UK banking industry, which is forecasted to be slightly illiquid with a small amount of expected cash outflow (i.e. £0.06 billion) in 2011. In our sample of the six biggest UK banks, only the HSBC maintains positive CFaR with 95% confidence, which means that there is only a 5% chance that HSBC's cash flow will drop below £0.67 billion by the end of 2011. RBS is expected to face the largest liquidity risk with a 5% chance that the bank will face a cash outflow that year in excess of £40.29 billion. Our estimates also suggest Lloyds TSB's cash flow is the most volatile of the six biggest UK banks, because it has the biggest deviation between its downside cash flow (i.e. CFaR) and expected cash flow.Liquidity risk, Exposure-based CFaR, Risk Management, Funding Pressure

Banking crisis. Case of U.S. banks versus UK banks

A variety of factors led or contributed to the current financial crisis, including loose monetary policy; excessive financial market liquidity, leverage and maturity mismatch; weak risk management and underwriting standards; and poor incentives and regulatory gaps in some important segments of the financial system. These weaknesses were amplified by certain pro-cyclical dynamics in regulatory, accounting and risk management frameworks. The banking sector was at the centre of the crisis as the market stress led to an acute re-concentration of on- and off-balance sheet risks in banks, putting pressure on capital buffers, liquidity and credit availability. The weaknesses in the banking sector amplified the transmission of shocks from the financial sector to the real economy. In this paper we want to study the impact of financial crisis on a sample of banks (five banks from USA - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, Wells Fargo & Company, US Bancorp, Bank of America Corporation - and five from UK - HSBC Holdings, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Standard Chartered, Lloyds Banking).banking crisis, interest rate of monetary policy, loan loss provision

Structuring information work: Ferranti and Martins Bank, 1952-1968

The adoption of large-scale computers by the British retail banks in the 1960s required a first-time dislocation of customer accounting from its confines in the branches, where it had been dealt with by paper-based and mechanized information systems, to a new collective space: the bank computer center. While historians have rightly stressed the continuities between centralized office work, punched-card tabulation and computerization, the shift from decentralized to centralized information work by means of a computer has received little attention. In this article, I examine the case of Ferranti and Martins Bank and employ elements of Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory to highlight the difficulties of transposing old information practices directly onto new computerized information work