← Search

Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 177 2025

Financial misconduct and bank risk-taking: Evidence from US banks

John Thornton1,2; Yener Altunbaş3; Yurtsev Uymaz1

1 University of East Anglia · 2 United States Department of the Treasury · 3 Bangor University

open access

Abstract

We test for a link between bank risk-taking and regulatory enforcements against US banks for financial misconduct. Misconduct-related enforcements are associated with increased bank risk-taking on several measures of risk, and there is some evidence that the impact of enforcements on risk-taking is accentuated in the presence of powerful CEOs and a higher proportion of institutional investor ownership and mitigated when executive boards are larger, older, more independent, more gender diverse, busier, and where independent directors are relatively inexperienced. The results are robust to alternative measures of bank risk-taking, and alternative estimation techniques, including controlling for endogeneity bias.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2025.107433
Volume
177
Pages
107433
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

Cite