We document the beneficial impact of human capital transfer from banks to nonfinancial firms: firms hiring ex-bankers have higher asset and employment growth and easier access to bank loans. Using a unique employee-employer-matched data set from Russia and exogenous variation in ex-bankers’ supply due to bank-branch-network restructurings, we establish the causal interpretation of these patterns. We also show that ex-bankers’ human capital consists of bank-specific and banking industry expertise (with the latter being acquired through interbank connections). Firms recognize the value of ex-bankers, who receive significant salary bonuses when a new bank loan is issued to the firm (JEL G21, G32, J24). Received August 17, 2020; editorial decision January 5, 2022; by editor: Isil Erel.

Using a portfolio theory framework, we introduce the concept of “political beta” to model firm-level export diversification in response to global political risk. Our model predicts that firms are less responsive to changes in political relations with lower beta countries—those that contribute less to the firm’s total political risk. We document patterns consistent with our model using disaggregated Russian firm-by-destination-country data during 2001–2011: Trade is positively correlated with political relations, though the effect is far weaker for trading partners whose political relations with Russia are relatively uncorrelated with those of other partners in a firm’s export portfolio.