In Good Times and in Bad: Bank Capital Ratios and Lending Rates

This paper investigates the relationship between bank capital ratios and lending rates using data from 1998 to 2012 for 13 large banks accounting for 75% of total UK lending. We document a substantial change in the coefficient of the Tier 1 capital ratio in reduced-form regressions for secured household lending rates; the coefficient changes from positive pre-crisis to negative in crisis. Significant changes are also detected in the relationship for unsecured household and corporate lending. Such instability is difficult to reconcile with many well-established theories of financial intermediation but is consistent with the relatively recent theories of bank portfolio decisions emphasising cyclical variation in bank leverage and risk-appetite

Systemic banks, capital composition and CoCo bonds issuance: The effects on bank risk

This paper shows that systemic banks are prone to increase their regulatory capital ratio through a decline in risk-weighted assets density and an intense use of lower level capital. The market access of systemic banks, and the fact that they were singled out for higher capital requirements seem to have biased them towards lower level capital, consistent with the theory that asymmetric information drives capital decisions. These effects are particularly strong for institutions that had a rather low level of capitalization at the start of the period and for those that exhibited a strong use of Additional Tier I capital before the regulatory changes. Strict capital composition requirements for firms with lower buffers would be an improvement