This paper empirically investigates the incidence of regulatory forbearance during the financial crisis. Using an option pricing technique in concert with valuation data gathered from failed bank sales, I find that failed banks consistently underreported the level of impairment in loan portfolios during the financial crisis period of 2008–2010, helping these market value insolvent banks to report adequate capital for regulatory purposes. Impairment-adjusted capital ratios provide evidence of regulatory forbearance for up to 18 months prior to seizure. Analyses of bank coverage ratios reveal that coverage ratios are negatively and significantly related to impairment levels and are significantly lower for banks with critically low levels of capital.

We study patterns of new lists, delisting and mergers in deregulated industries in the 1973 to 2017 period. Consistent with prior research, we find that merger activity tends to cluster in deregulated industries. But we provide new evidence that new lists and overall delisting also cluster in deregulated industries, with new lists preceding delisting. We also find that deregulated industries are growing in size and value prior to deregulation and grow significantly larger, more valuable and more competitive following deregulation. The results are consistent with the linkage of deregulation and industries undergoing significant change; deregulation aids in industry adaptation to change and facilitates expansion. Moreover, the results provide a specific mechanism by which industries undergo event waves.

This paper examines the informational role of equity options trading around Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements. We find that information contained in option trades prior to FOMC rate change announcements, measured as implied volatility spread, predicts bank stock returns to a greater degree than does volatility spread prior to non-meeting days. We examine U.S. banks due to their interest rate sensitivity; however, we also show that return predictability around rate changes is reliably stronger in all firms, across all industries that are more interest rate sensitive. We find that return predictability is primarily driven by surprise changes in interest rates that occur during meetings with high degrees of information asymmetry. Finally, we document that volatility spread impounds information about FOMC meetings before that information is reflected in stock prices; this effect is significantly greater during surprise events, suggesting that the options market is an important source of informed trading.