Relying on a hand-collected data set of European asset securitizations, we analyze risk retention, a key regulatory reform requirement after the global financial crisis. We find today’s ABS markets to be characterized by significant retention opacity, caused by differences in legal retention options and retained portions. To improve the transparency of effective, rather than nominal, risk retention in the market, we propose a new, simple metric that captures the share of expected loss retained by the issuer. As to policy conclusions, we suggest to change the existing regulation by dropping the mandatory minimum retention and replacing it with a requirement for full transparency about effective risk retention.

We analyze the emergence of systemic risk in a network model of interconnected bank balance sheets. The model incorporates multiple sources of systemic risk, including size of financial institutions, direct exposure from interbank lendings, and asset fire sales. We suggest a new macroprudential risk management approach building on a system wide value at risk (SVaR). Under the SVaR metric, the contribution of individual banks to systemic risk is well defined and can be approximated by a Shapley value-type measure. We show that, in a SVaR regime, a fair systemic risk charge which is proportional to a bank's individual contribution to systemic risk diverges from the optimal macroprudential capitalization of the banks from a planner's perspective. The results have implications for the design of macroprudential capital surcharges.

Multiple banking is a common characteristic of the corporate lending, particularly of medium-sized and large firms. However, if the firms are facing distress, multiple lenders may have serious coordination problems, as has been argued in the theoretical literature. In this paper we analyse the problems of multiple banking in borrower distress empirically. We rely on a unique panel data set that includes detailed credit-file information on distressed lending relationships in Germany. In particular, it includes information on “bank pools”, a legal institution aimed at coordinating lender interests in distress. We find that the existence of small pools increases the probability of workout success and that this effect reverses when pools become large. We identify major determinants of pool formation, in particular the number of banks, the distribution of lending among banks, and the severity of the distress.

Bank internal ratings of corporate clients are intended to quantify the expected likelihood of future borrower defaults. This paper develops a comprehensive framework for evaluating the quality of standard rating systems. We suggest a number of principles that ought to be met by “good rating practice”. These “generally accepted rating principles” are potentially relevant for the improvement of existing rating systems. They are also relevant for the development of certification standards for internal rating systems, as currently discussed in a consultative paper issued by the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, entitled “A new capital adequacy framework”. We would very much appreciate any comments by readers that help to develop these rating standards further.

The German financial market is often characterized as a bank-based system with strong bank–customer relationships. The corresponding notion of a housebank is closely related to the theoretical idea of relationship lending. It is the objective of this paper to provide a direct comparison between housebanks and “normal” banks as to their credit policy. Therefore, we analyze a new data set, representing a random sample of borrowers drawn from the credit portfolios of five leading German banks over a period of five years. We use credit-file data rather than industry survey data and, thus, focus the analysis on information that is directly related to actual credit decisions. In particular, we use bank-internal borrower rating data to evaluate borrower quality, and the bank’s own assessment of its housebank status to control for information-intensive relationships. The major results of our study support the view that housebanks are able to establish a distinct behavioral pattern consistent with the idea of long-term commitment. We find that housebanks do provide liquidity insurance in situations of unexpected deterioration of borrower ratings. With respect to loan pricing, we find no evidence for intra- or intertemporal price differentiation related to housebanking.

Franklin Allen, Hans Gersbach, Jan-Pieter Krahnen, Anthony M. Santomero; Competition Among Banks: Introduction and Conference Overview, European Finance Re

This paper is based on a panel discussion at the international bank conference on Frontier Risks, Financial Innovation and Prudential Regulation of Banks in Gothenburg, Sweden, June 2–4, 2024. The panelists were Deborah Lucas, Jan Pieter Krahnen, and Magnus Olsson, with Ted Lindblom moderating. This paper contains the panel presentations, along with a unifying discussion by Paolo Fulghieri and Anjan Thakor. The main themes in the paper focus on how society should balance costs and benefits in designing the prudential regulation of banks. Optimal regulation should take into account how banks and markets interact, the dangers of both under-regulation that spawns excessive risk-taking and over-regulation that depresses value-enhancing innovation in financial services, the somewhat fragmented nature of national-sovereignty-constrained European banking and financial markets regulation relative to bank regulation in the US, and how prudential regulation can be improved by more explicitly dealing with interest rate risk.