This study examines the relevance of bank board structure on bank risk-taking. Using a sample of 212 large US bank holding companies over 1997–2004 (1534 observations), this study finds that strong bank boards (boards reflecting more of bank shareholders interest) particularly small and less restrictive boards positively affect bank risk-taking. In contrast, CEO power (CEO’s ability to control board decision) negatively affects bank risk-taking. These results are consistent with the bank contracting environment and robust to several proxies for bank risk-takings and different estimation techniques.

We argue a positive association between common ownership and liquidity creation because common ownership increases risk-absorption capacity through higher profit margins, greater equity capital, and improved disclosure quality. Accordingly, we find solid evidence that banks with greater common ownership create 3.56%–4.54% more liquidity. The beneficial effect on liquidity creation is dominant for banks with high risk-absorption capacities, enhanced disclosure quality, low competition, greater long-term shareholdings, and low performance-sensitive managerial incentives, substantiating our theoretical conjectures and establishing five significant channels. Finally, we show that banks have incentive to create more liquidity when they have significant co-ownerships among themselves. Our main findings remain robust to multiple proxies, alternative specifications, and three methods to address endogeneity concerns – difference-in-differences based on the Blackrock–Barclays Global Investors merger in 2009, two-stage least squares analysis with instrumental variables based on Russell 2000 index inclusion, and propensity score matching.