We examine how bank-specific capital requirements affect banks’ capital ratios and balance sheet composition over the period 1989-2013. We find that higher requirements, even when not binding in a regulatory sense, result in higher bank capital ratios, achieved by a combination of asset contraction, risk reduction and capital raising strategies. We find that after the 2007-09 financial crisis, banks place greater emphasis on raising capital, but that they continue to focus first on raising lower-quality capital. Our results have implications for evaluating the efficacy of bank-specific capital requirements as a policy tool to influence bank balance sheet behavior and resilience.