Analysing the Motives and the Outcomes of Bank Mergers

We have examined in this study the bank mergers experience in Lebanon. Between 1994 and 2002, 25 bank merger operations took place. Firstly, we have compared the characteristics of acquiring and acquired banks, in order to identify the differences between the two groups of banks. Secondly, we have detected the changes in performance associated with these mergers. Our empirical results show a significant differences between the two categories in terms of profitability (ROE and NIM), in traditional cost measures (cost-to-income and staff expenses), in favour of acquiring banks. Besides, acquiring banks have been larger (in terms of assets), with better risk profile. However, no significant difference in productive efficiency was observed. The comparison of the performance measures of banks before and after the takeover, show a slight improvement in profitability, efficiency, with some deterioration in productive efficiency and considerable increase in credit risk

Detecting the Causality between Budget Deficit and Trade Deficit in Lebanon

This paper examines the link between government budget deficit and trade in Lebanon over the period 1975-2011. It uses cointegration and Granger causality tests to detect the short-run and the long-run relationships between the two deficits, and with other macroeconomic variables. The empirical results suggest that the budget deficit, the trade balance, the interest rate, and the exchange rate are cointegrated, suggesting the existence of an equilibrium relationship binding all these variables together. Besides, and most importantly, a bi-directional causality between budget deficit and trade deficit is detected, giving support to the “twin deficit” hypothesis

Evaluation of Banking Fragility: Evidence from Banks in the MENA Region

This paper aimed to detect the impact of changes in the landscape of the banking sectors in 12 MENA countries on the fragility of banks over the period 2005-2011, using the Z-score indicator introduced by Scott (1981) and developed by Goyeau and Tarazi (1992). The empirical results show that Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, UAE and Lebanon witnessed a decline in their fragility over the studied period. Conversely, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Turkey have experienced a worsening in their fragility. Secondly, the Z' indicator shows that Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon recorded less risk exposure than other countries, which can be explained by a lower risk exposure and more sufficient levels of equity. Moreover, the results show that Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have witnessed a decrease in their risk level, while other countries have experienced a deterioration of their fragility such as Bahrain, Oman, Qatar the UAE and Tunisia. Finally, the paper tested the impact of some micro- and macroeconomic factors on bank fragility, and found that the probability of default decreases with higher bank capital and with an increase in inflation rates, whereas it increases with higher bank liquidity, credit risk, and profitability

The Effect of Capital Requirements on Banking Risk

Using a two simultaneous equations model, we analysed the impact of capital requirements on bank risk-taking at Lebanese banks. Using a panel data set of 41 commercial banks between 1996 and 2008, we found that higher capital requirements are associated with increase in risk. We also found a positive correlation between bank profitability and increase in capital, which suggests that Lebanese banks rely on retained earnings to meet capital requirements. The competitive pressures seem to have no impact on bank capitalisation or bank risk-taking. Our findings showed that larger banks tend to hold lower capital and have better capability to control risk, mainly through diversification. Finally, we observed that funding decisions are correlated with risk-taking

Optimisation SIMD de la largeur des mots pour la conversion de virgule flottante en virgule fixe pour des processeurs embarqués

In order to cut-down their cost and/or their power consumption, many embedded processors do not provide hardware support for floating-point arithmetic. However, applications in many domains, such as signal processing, are generally specified using floating-point arithmetic for the sake of simplicity. Porting these applications on such embedded processors requires a software emulation of floating-point arithmetic, which can greatly degrade performance. To avoid this, the application is converted to use fixed-point arithmetic instead. Floating-point to fixed-point conversion involves a subtle tradeoff between performance and precision ; it enables the use of narrower data word lengths at the cost of degrading the computation accuracy. Besides, most embedded processors provide support for SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) as a mean to improve performance. In fact, this allows the execution of one operation on multiple data in parallel, thus ultimately reducing the execution time. However, the application should usually be transformed in order to take advantage of the SIMD instruction set. This transformation, known as Simdization, is affected by the data word lengths ; narrower word lengths enable a higher SIMD parallelism rate. Hence the tradeoff between precision and Simdization. Many existing work aimed at provide/improving methodologies for automatic floating-point to fixed-point conversion on the one side, and Simdization on the other. In the state-of-the-art, both transformations are considered separately even though they are strongly related. In this context, we study the interactions between these transformations in order to better exploit the performance/accuracy tradeoff. First, we propose an improved SLP (Superword Level Parallelism) extraction (an Simdization technique) algorithm. Then, we propose a new methodology to jointly perform floating-point to fixed-point conversion and SLP extraction. Finally, we implement this work as a fully automated source-to-source compiler flow. Experimental results, targeting four different embedded processors, show the validity of our approach in efficiently exploiting the performance/accuracy tradeoff compared to a typical approach, which considers both transformations independently.Afin de limiter leur coût et/ou leur consommation électrique, certains processeurs embarqués sacrifient le support matériel de l'arithmétique à virgule flottante. Pourtant, pour des raisons de simplicité, les applications sont généralement spécifiées en utilisant l'arithmétique à virgule flottante. Porter ces applications sur des processeurs embarqués de ce genre nécessite une émulation logicielle de l'arithmétique à virgule flottante, qui peut sévèrement dégrader la performance. Pour éviter cela, l'application est converti pour utiliser l'arithmétique à virgule fixe, qui a l'avantage d'être plus efficace à implémenter sur des unités de calcul entier. La conversion de virgule flottante en virgule fixe est une procédure délicate qui implique des compromis subtils entre performance et précision de calcul. Elle permet, entre autre, de réduire la taille des données pour le coût de dégrader la précision de calcul. Par ailleurs, la plupart de ces processeurs fournissent un support pour le calcul vectoriel de type SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) afin d'améliorer la performance. En effet, cela permet l'exécution d'une opération sur plusieurs données en parallèle, réduisant ainsi le temps d'exécution. Cependant, il est généralement nécessaire de transformer l'application pour exploiter les unités de calcul vectoriel. Cette transformation de vectorisation est sensible à la taille des données ; plus leurs tailles diminuent, plus le taux de vectorisation augmente. Il apparaît donc un compromis entre vectorisation et précision de calcul. Plusieurs travaux ont proposé des méthodologies permettant, d'une part la conversion automatique de virgule flottante en virgule fixe, et d'autre part la vectorisation automatique. Dans l'état de l'art, ces deux transformations sont considérées indépendamment, pourtant elles sont fortement liées. Dans ce contexte, nous étudions la relation entre ces deux transformations, dans le but d'exploiter efficacement le compromis entre performance et précision de calcul. Ainsi, nous proposons d'abord un algorithme amélioré pour l'extraction de parallélisme SLP (Superword Level Parallelism ; une technique de vectorisation). Puis, nous proposons une nouvelle méthodologie permettant l'application conjointe de la conversion de virgule flottante en virgule fixe et de l'exploitation du SLP. Enfin, nous implémentons cette approche sous forme d'un flot de compilation source-à-source complètement automatisé, afin de valider ces travaux. Les résultats montrent l'efficacité de cette approche, dans l'exploitation du compromis entre performance et précision, vis-à-vis d'une approche classique considérant ces deux transformations indépendamment

Bank Efficiency and Foreign Ownership in the Lebanese Banking Sector

International audienceWe have compared the efficiency of banks with majority domestic ownership, banks with majority foreign ownership, and the subsidiaries of foreign banks operating in the Lebanese market between 1996 and 2005. We have implemented the DEA methodology to calculate the yearly scores for technical, allocative, and cost efficiencies for the three groups of banks. Moreover, we have extended our study to reveal the factors that shape bank efficiency, by proposing several micro and macroeconomic variables and testing their correlation with this efficiency. Firstly, our results did not prove significant differences between the efficiency of the three groups of banks. However, the evolution of the efficiency scores over the period under study shows an improvement in the performance of banks with majority foreign ownership, but some deterioration in the performance of banks with majority domestic ownership and the subsidiaries of foreign banks. Secondly, and with respect to the factors affecting bank efficiency, we found that the employed variables have different impacts according to groups, which may confirm that bank efficiency is differently determined, according to bank ownership

Bank Efficiency and Foreign Ownership in the Lebanese Banking Sector

We have compared the efficiency of banks with majority domestic ownership, banks with majority foreign ownership, and the subsidiaries of foreign banks operating in the Lebanese market between 1996 and 2005. We have implemented the DEA methodology to calculate the yearly scores for technical, allocative, and cost efficiencies for the three groups of banks. Moreover, we have extended our study to reveal the factors that shape bank efficiency, by proposing several micro and macroeconomic variables and testing their correlation with this efficiency.

Superword Level Parallelism aware Word Length Optimization

International audienceMany embedded processors do not support floating-point arithmetic in order to comply with strict cost and power consumption constraints. But, they generally provide support for SIMD as a mean to improve performance for little cost overhead. Achieving good performance when targeting such processors requires the use of fixed-point arithmetic and efficient exploitation of SIMD data-path. To reduce time-to-market, automatic SIMDization – such as superword level parallelism (SLP) extraction – and float-to-fixed-point conversion methodologies have been proposed. In this paper we show that applying these transformations independently is not efficient. We propose a SLP-aware word length optimization algorithm to jointly perform float-to-fixed-point conversion and SLP extraction. We implement the proposed approach in a source-to-source compiler framework and evaluate it on several embedded processors. Experimental results illustrate the validity of our approach

A key progress in introducing single walled carbon nanotubes to photovoltaic devices

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System level synthesis for virtual memory enabled hardware threads

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