Credit Ratings as Coordination Mechanisms

In this paper, we provide a novel rationale for credit ratings. The rationale that we propose is that credit ratings can serve as a coordinating mechanism in situations where multiple equilibria can obtain. We show that credit ratings provide a "focal point" for firms and their investors. We explore the vital, but previously overlooked implicit contractual relationship between a credit rating agency and a firm. Credit ratings can help fix the desired equilibrium and as such play an economically meaningful role. Our model provides several empirical predictions and insights regarding the expected price impact of ratings changes, the discreteness in funding cost changes, and the effect of the focus of organizations on the efficacy of credit ratings.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39841/3/wp457.pd

Objectivity, Proximity and Adaptability in Corporate Governance

Countries appear to differ considerably in the basic orientations of their corporate governance structures. We postulate the trade-off between objectivity and proximity as fundamental to the corporate governance debate. We stress the value of objectivity that comes with distance (e.g. the market oriented U.S. system), and the value of better information that comes with proximity (e.g. the more intrusive Continental European model). Our key result is that the optimal distance between management and monitor (board or shareholders) has a bang-bang solution: either one should capitalize on the better information that comes with proximity or one should seek to benefit optimally from the objectivity that comes with distance. We argue that this result points at an important link between the optimal corporate governance arrangement and industry structure. In this context, we also discuss the ways in which investors have "contracted around" the flaws in their own corporate governance systems, pointing at the adaptability of different arrangements.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39651/3/wp266.pd

Restructuring in the banking industry with implications for Europe

Set against the background of a rapidly consolidating financial sector, this paper explores the main forces that are driving this process. Acknowledging that the search for scale and scope economies is one of them, the paper emphasises that the empirical evidence in support of such economies is mixed, at best; while scale and scope economies exist, in principle, they are difficult to attain in practice. The paper considers strategic positioning in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment a more important factor: by expanding scope (and scale), financial institutions acquire options to venture into new activities. An implication of this strategic-option explanation is that consolidation, scope expansion in particular, will partially unravel as and when uncertainty declines and competition forces financial institutions to discover their true competitive advantages

Credit Ratings as Coordination Mechanisms

In this paper, we provide a novel rationale for credit ratings. The rationale that we propose is that credit ratings can serve as a coordinating mechanism in situations where multiple equilibria can obtain. We show that credit ratings provide a "focal point" for firms and their investors. We explore the vital, but previously overlooked implicit contractual relationship between a credit rating agency and a firm. Credit ratings can help fix the desired equilibrium and as such play an economically meaningful role. Our model provides several empirical predictions and insights regarding the expected price impact of ratings changes, the discreteness in funding cost changes, and the effect of the focus of organizations on the efficacy of credit ratings.coordination, credit ratings, multiple equilibria

Market Discipline in Conglomerate Banks: Is an Internal Allocation of Cost of Capital Necessary as Incentive Device

This paper analyzes the optimal conglomeration of bank activities. We show that the effectiveness of market discipline for stand-alone activities (divisions) is of crucial importance for the potential benefits of conglomeration. We find that effective market discipline reduces the potential benefits of conglomeration. With ineffective market discipline of stand-alone activities conglomeration would further undermine market discipline, but may nevertheless be beneficial. In particular, when rents are not too high the diversification benefits of conglomeration may dominate the negative incentive effects. A more competitive environment therefore may induce conglomeration. We also show that introducing internal cost of allocation schemes may create 'internal' market discipline that complements the weak external market discipline of the conglomerate. In this context we show that these schemes should respond to actual risk choices, rather than be limited to anticipated risk choices.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39515/3/wp125.pd

Financial innovations, marketability and stability in banking

Abstract A fundamental feature of more recent financial innovations is their focus on augmenting marketability. We point at the potential dark side of marketability. Marketability has possibly led to an excessive proliferation of transaction-oriented banking (trading and financial market activities). The 2007-2009 financial crisis appears to have countered this trend, and possibly reemphasized the importance of relationship banking. In order to focus on these issues in a rigorous way, we will evaluate the key insights from the relationship banking literature, including the potential complementarities and conflicts of interest between intermediated relationship banking activities and financial market (underwriting, securitization, etc.) activities. From here we will point at institutional and regulatory changes that might be needed to improve the stability of the financial sector. One could say that the institutional structure (including regulation) has not kept up with the enhanced marketability and "changeability" of the industry. ______________________

'Trust is good, control is better': the 1974 Herstatt-Bank crisis and its implications for international regulatory reform

With its international supervisory and regulatory implications, the failure of Bankhaus Herstatt is one of the landmarks of post-war financial history. This article offers the first comprehensive historical account of the Herstatt crisis, and contributes to the wider discussions on international supervisory and regulatory reform since the mid-1970s, including regulatory capture, markets' self-regulation and resolution of failed banks. In doing so, it first argues that contrary to a widely held view, the German authorities received early and repeated warnings about Herstatt's dealings but this involved only limited and ineffective regulatory/supervisory responses, then it turns to the actual collapse of the bank in June 1974, and finally explores the wider regulatory issues raised by the Herstatt case

The Many Faces of Information Disclosure

We examine the effects of a variety of mandatory information disclosure regimes on the expected revenues of issuing firms and on their endogenously-arising incentives for financial innovation. The main question we ask is: what kind of information and how much of it should firms be asked to disclose? The analysis uses a noisy rational expectations model in which some investors can choose to become informed at their own expense. Information disclosure then potentially affects the information-advantage of these investors vis-a-vis uninformed (liquidity) investors in the market, and hence their information-acquisition incentives. Thus, asking managers to disclose more information is not obviously desirable for the shareholders of issuing firms. Our main results are as follows. Mandating the disclosure of information about total firm value that would otherwise not have become available to any investor is always good for issuing firms. It increases their expected revenues and also strengthens financial innovation incentives. Mandating the disclosure of information about total firm value that would have been acquired anyway by informed investors but improves the quality of the information that uninformed investors have will benefit firms in emerging capital markets but hurt those in developed capital markets. In developed markets, the attention devoted to disclosure should thus shift from information that concerns total firm value to that which concerns the distribution of this value among claimants. Our conclusion is that disclosure requirements should be more stringent in less-developed capital markets, and that greater stringency in disclosure requirements on securities exchanges leads to a worsening of the borrower pool faced by banks. Our analysis also implies that competition among exchanges or securities regulators will not necessarily lead to a weakening of disclosure requirements.

Default Risk and Equity Returns: A Comparison of the Bank-Based German and the U.S. Financial System

In this paper, we address the question whether the impact of default risk on equity returns depends on the financial system firms operate in. Using an implementation of Merton's option-pricing model for the value of equity to estimate firms' default risk, we construct a factor that measures the excess return of firms with low default risk over firms with high default risk. We then compare results from asset pricing tests for the German and the U.S. stock markets. Since Germany is the prime example of a bank-based financial system, where debt is supposedly a major instrument of corporate governance, we expect that a systematic default risk effect on equity returns should be more pronounced for German rather than U.S. firms. Our evidence suggests that a higher firm default risk systematically leads to lower returns in both capital markets. This contradicts some previous results for the U.S. by Vassalou/Xing (2004), but we show that their default risk factor looses its explanatory power if one includes a default risk factor measured as a factor mimicking portfolio. It further turns out that the composition of corporate debt affects equity returns in Germany. Firms' default risk sensitivities are attenuated the more a firm depends on bank debt financing