We empirically investigate the impact of shareholders’ excess control rights (greater control than cash-flow rights) on bank profitability and risk and how the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 might have modified such an impact for a sample of European commercial banks. While the presence of excess control rights is associated with lower profitability, higher earnings volatility and higher default risk before the crisis (2002–2006) but also at the later stage of the financial crisis (2009–2010), conversely, it improves profitability, lowers earnings volatility and no longer affects default risk during the 2007–2008 financial crisis years. Further evidence shows that, regardless of the period, the effect of excess control rights on profitability and risk is accentuated in family-controlled banks and in countries with relatively weak shareholder protection rights and that such an effect is mainly effective at intermediate and high levels of excess control rights. Overall, our findings contribute to the literature examining the corporate governance determinants of banks’ performance during the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and have several policy implications.

The theory of financial intermediation highlights various channels through which capital and liquidity are interrelated. Using a simultaneous equations framework, we investigate the relationship between bank regulatory capital and bank liquidity measured from on-balance sheet positions for European and US publicly traded commercial banks. Previous research studying the determinants of bank capital buffer has neglected the role of liquidity. On the whole, we find that banks decrease their regulatory capital ratios when they face higher illiquidity as defined in the Basel III accords or when they create more liquidity as measured by Berger and Bouwman (2009). However, considering other measures of illiquidity that focus more closely on core deposits in the United States, our results show that small banks strengthen their solvency standards when they are exposed to higher illiquidity. Our empirical investigation supports the need to implement minimum liquidity ratios concomitant to capital ratios, as stressed by the Basel Committee; however, our findings also shed light on the need to further clarify how to define and measure illiquidity and also on how to regulate large banking institutions, which behave differently than smaller ones.

Frictions prevent banks to immediately adjust their capital ratio towards their desired and/or imposed level. This paper analyzes (i) whether or not these frictions are larger for regulatory capital ratios vis-à-vis a plain leverage ratio; (ii) which adjustment channels banks use to adjust their capital ratio; and (iii) how the speed of adjustment and adjustment channels differ between large, systemic and complex banks versus small banks. Our results, obtained using a sample of listed banks across OECD countries for the 2001–2012 period, bear critical policy implications for the implementation of new (systemic risk-based) capital requirements and their impact on banks’ balance sheets, specifically lending, and hence the real economy.

Our study of 602 European banks over 1996–2002 investigates how the banks’ expansion into fee-based services has affected their interest margins and loan pricing. We find that higher income share from commissions and fees is associated with lower margins and loan spreads. The higher the commission and fee income share, moreover, the weaker the link between bank loan spreads and loan risk. The latter result is consistent with the conjecture that banks price (or misprice) loans to increase sales of other services. That loss leader (or cross selling) hypothesis has implications for bank regulation and competition with (non-bank) lenders.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between bank risk and product diversification in the changing structure of the European banking industry. Based on a broad set of European banks for the period 1996–2002, our study first shows that banks expanding into non-interest income activities present higher risk and higher insolvency risk than banks which mainly supply loans. However, considering size effects and splitting non-interest activities into both trading activities and commission and fee activities we show that the positive link with risk is mostly accurate for small banks and essentially driven by commission and fee activities. A higher share of trading activities is never associated with higher risk and for small banks it implies, in some cases, lower asset and default risks.

This paper examines the influence of non-interest activities on bank lending in terms of loan quality and interest spread. We also investigate the possible existence of profit complementarities between non-interest activities and lending. Using quarterly data on 6921 U.S. commercial banks between 2007:Q3 to 2016:Q3 we find that non-interest activities have no adverse influence on bank credit risk. This is the case for banks of different asset size (including systemically important banks) as well as for distressed banks. There is evidence that banks with assets between 100 million and 1 billion that have a greater share of fiduciary income have lower credit risk. They also have lower interest rates on loans secured by real estate, and higher franchise values, particularly post-crisis. Moreover, banks in the aforementioned size range benefit from synergies in joint production of non-interest income and lending, whereas other banks, in particular smaller banks (below $100 million in assets) suffer from diseconomies of joint production. Larger banks exhibit cross-subsidization between several non-interest activities and lending business.

Using detailed ownership data for a sample of European commercial banks, we analyze the link between ownership structure and risk in both privately owned and publicly held banks. We consider five categories of shareholders that are specific to our dataset. We find that ownership structure is significant in explaining risk differences but mainly for privately owned banks. A higher equity stake of either individuals/families or banking institutions is associated with a decrease in asset risk and default risk. In addition, institutional investors and non-financial companies impose the riskiest strategies when they hold higher stakes. For publicly held banks, changes in ownership structure do not affect risk taking. Market forces seem to align the risk-taking behavior of publicly held banks, such that ownership structure is no longer a determinant in explaining risk differences. However, higher stakes of banking institutions in publicly held banks are associated with lower credit and default risk.