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Corporate Governance of Financial Institutions: What’s Special About Banks?

This keynote lecture discusses the unique challenges and features of corporate governance in banks, including leverage, diffuse debtholders, systemic importance, and regulatory issues. It also explores the implications for policy and the need for tailored regulations and improved governance frameworks.

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Corporate Governance of Financial Institutions: What’s Special About Banks?

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  1. Corporate Governance of Financial Institutions: What’s Special About Banks? Luc Laeven (IMF) Keynote Lecture DNB Conference, Nov 8, 2012 The views expressed here are my own and should not be interpreted to reflect those of the IMF or IMF Board

  2. Costliest banking crises since 1970s Source: Laeven and Valencia (2012)

  3. Stealing “other people’s money” “HSBC’s head of compliance quits after money laundering allegations” (Telegraph, July 17, 2012). “I may like many bankers, but I rather dislike banks. I recognize their necessity, but fear their irresponsibility. Worse, they are irresponsible partly because they know they are necessary. No industry has a comparable talent for privatizing gains and socializing losses. Participants in no other industry get as self-righteously angry when public officials – particularly, central bankers – fail to come at once to their rescue when they get into (well-deserved) trouble.” (Martin Wolf, Financial Times, Jan 15, 2008).

  4. What’s special about banks? • They are highly leveraged • They have diffuse debtholders • They are large creditors • They are systemically important • Deposit insurance and financial regulation

  5. I. Limits of traditional corporate governance • Concentrated ownership • Executive pay • Market for corporate control • Large creditors

  6. II. Bank regulation and systemic risk • Externalities from bank failures • Bank performance and systemic risk • Regulation and governance interact • Regulatory forbearance

  7. Volatility and correlation of weekly stock returnsLarge and complex US financial institutions, 1980-2011 Source: Datastream. Based on weekly stock returns. Sample of large and complex US financial institutions as defined in Gary H. Stern, Ron J. Feldman, 2004, Too big to fail: the hazards of bank bailouts” Brookings Institution Press, (Box 4.1, page 39).

  8. Regulatory forbearance • “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman (Brandeis, 1914)” • “The only meaningful distinction between man and machine is moral hazard” (Boot and Thakor, 1993)

  9. Regulatory forbearance during crises Source: Call Reports of U.S. Bank Holding Companies, Median Values

  10. III. Dealing with systemic risk • Government ownership • Macroprudential regulation • Capital • Resolution • Government bailouts

  11. The fall of Bankia Bankia’s price-to-book value of equity, 2012 Source: Bloomberg

  12. IV. Policy implications • Bank regulations must be custom designed and adapted to financial governance systems • Governance is insufficient: Need macroprudential regulation • Enforcement of regulation needs to be enhanced • Need more capital • Need to improve resolution frameworks

  13. V. Conclusions

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