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The present dissertation includes three research papers dealing with the following banking topics: (dis-) incentives and risk taking, earnings management and the regulation of supervisory boards.
„Do cooperative banks suffer from moral hazard behaviour? Evidence in the context of efficiency and risk“:
We use Granger-causality techniques to evaluate the intertemporal relationships among risk, efficiency and capital. We use two different measures of bank efficiency, i.e., cost and profit efficiency, since these measures reflect different managerial abilities. One is the ability to manage costs, and the other is the ability to maximize profits. We find that lower cost and profit efficiency Granger-cause increases in liquidity risk. We also identify that credit risk negatively Granger-causes cost and profit efficiency. Most importantly, our results show a positive relationship between capital and credit risk, thus displaying that moral hazard (due to limited liability and deposit insurance) does not apply to our sample of cooperative banks. On the contrary, we find evidence that banks with low capital are able to improve their loan quality in subsequent periods. These findings may be important to regulators, who should consider banks’ business models when introducing new regulatory capital constraints.
„Earnings Management Modelling in the Banking Industry – Evaluating valuable approaches“:
Accounting research has separately studied the field of Earnings Management (EM) for non-financial and financial industries. Since EM cannot be observed directly, it is important for every research question in any setting to find a verifiable proxy for EM. However, we still lack a thorough understanding of what regressors can add value to the estimation process of EM in banks. This study tries to close this gap and analyses existing model specifications of discretionary loan loss provisions (LLP) in the banking sector to identify common pattern groups and specific patterns used. Thereupon, we use an US-dataset from 2005-2015 and apply prevalent test procedures to examine the extent of measurement errors, extreme performance and omitted-variable biases and predictive power of the discretionary proxies of each of the models. Our results indicate that a thorough understanding about the methodological modelling process of EM in the banking industry is important. The currently established models to estimate EM are appropriate yet optimizable. In particular, we identify non-performing asset patterns as the most important group, while loan loss allowances and net charge offs can add some value, though do not seem to be indispensable. In addition, our results show that non-linearity of certain regressors can be an issue, which should be addressed in future research, while we identify some omitted and possibly correlated variables that might add value to specifications in identifying non-discretionary LLP. Results also indicate that a dynamic model and endogeneity robust estimation approach is not necessarily linked to better prediction power.
„Board Regulation and its Impact on Composition and Effects – Evidence from German Cooperative Bank“:
This study employs a system GMM framework to examine the impact of potential regulatory intervention regarding the occupations of supervisory board members in cooperative banks. To achieve insights the study proceeds in two different ways. First, the author investigates the changes in board structure prior and following to the German Act to Strengthen Financial Market and Insurance Supervision (FinVAG). Second, the author estimates the influence of Ph.D. degree holders and occupational concentration on bank-risk changes in consideration of the implementation of FinVAG. Therefore, the sample consists of 246 German cooperative banks from 2006-2011. Regarding bank-risk the author applies four different measures: credit-, equity-, liquidity-risk and the Z-Score, with the former three also being addressed in FinVAG. Results indicate that the implementation of FinVAG results in structural changes in board composition, especially at the expense of farmers. In addition, the implementation affects all risk-measures and relations between risk-measures and supervisory board characteristics in a risk-reducing and therefore intended way.
To disentangle the complex relationship between board characteristics and risk measures the study utilizes a two-step system GMM estimator to account for unobserved heterogeneity, and simultaneity in order to reduce endogeneity problems. The findings may be especially relevant for stakeholders, regulators, supervisors and managers.
Zunächst wird die Geschichte des Aktienrechts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Aufsichtsrats in Deutschland als Überwachungsorgan dargestellt. Jede Wandlung, die der Wirtschaft widerfahren ist, hat Strukturveränderungen und Reformen des Aktienrechts hervorgerufen. Die Darstellung beginnt bei den Handelskompanien. Das zweite Kapitel enthält die Beschreibung der Geschichte der Europäischen Aktiengesellschaft sowie die Darstellung der jeweiligen Änderungen der Normen. Dadurch werden insbesondere Parallelen und Unterschiede zwischen den Statuten und dem deutschen Aktienrecht deutlich. Die aus der Darstellung der Geschichte des deutschen Aufsichtsrats gezogenen Ergebnisse werden im dritten Kapitel auf das Statut über die Europäische Aktiengesellschaft 1991 angewendet. Es wird untersucht, ob Lehren gezogen werden können, mit deren Hilfe das Statut 1991 beurteilt werden kann. In die Wertung fließt ebenfalls die Änderung des Aktiengesetzes durch das KonTraG ein.
Die vorliegende Arbeit behandelt die Rechtsvergleichung nationaler Modelle unternehmerischer Mitbestimmung in den EU-Mitgliedstaaten. Der Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung liegt auf der Mitbestimmung der Arbeitnehmer in den Unternehmensorganen im engeren Sinne, d.h. der Präsenz von Arbeitnehmervertretern auf höchster Ebene in den Verwaltungs- oder Aufsichtsorganen eines Unternehmens. In Zeiten enormer grenzübergreifender Verflechtung politischer und wirtschaftlicher Art stellt die Beteiligung der kleinsten Einheit der Globalökonomie – des Arbeitnehmers – die Parlamente, welche sich in sozialer Verantwortung sehen, vor große Herausforderungen. Divergierende Mitbestimmungsmodelle und variantenreiche Vorstellungen über die zukünftige Ausformung von Mitbestimmung in Europa sind entscheidende Gründe für das mehrmalige Scheitern europäischer Harmonisierungsvorhaben, v.a. gesellschaftsrechtlicher Natur. Ausgangspunkt der Rechtsvergleichung ist die Festlegung der grundlegenden Abgrenzungskriterien in den verschiedenen Rechtsordnungen und eine anschließende Darstellung der nationalen Mitbestimmungssysteme. Mit Blick auf historische Entwicklungen und Zusammenhänge wurden die Nationen entsprechend der rechtsvergleichenden Methodik in vier europäische Rechtskreise unterteilt. Bei der funktionalen Vergleichung der verschiedenen Mitbestimmungspraktiken ließen sich insbesondere bei den Organisationsstrukturen der Gesellschaften und den Arbeitnehmerschwellenwerten, deren Erreichen nötig ist, um zur Mitbestimmung berechtigt zu sein, große Unterschiede feststellen. Neben diesen Unterschieden in Staaten mit gesetzlicher Unternehmensmitbestimmung finden sich wirtschaftlich bedeutende Nationen, darunter Frankreich und Großbritannien, die überhaupt nicht für zwingende unternehmerische Mitbestimmung optiert haben, und in denen v.a. gewerkschaftlich organisierte Arbeitnehmerbeteiligung die Arbeitnehmer mitbestimmen lässt. Die vorgenannten Aspekte werden in der Arbeit vergleichend vorgestellt und anschließend einer kritischen Analyse unterzogen, die die Mitbestimmungsrealität in der Europäischen Union einbezieht.
Nach Unternehmensskandalen wie bei Enron, Worldcom oder Comroad steht das Thema Corporate Governance in vielen Ländern wieder ganz oben auf der Agenda. Als Reaktion auf die spektakulären Unternehmenskrisen wird weltweit in zahlreichen Ausschüssen über die optimale Ausgestaltung und Qualität der Unternehmensführung und -kontrolle diskutiert. Im Zentrum der Diskussionen in Deutschland steht dabei häufig die Frage nach der Qualität der internen Managementkontrolle durch den Aufsichtsrat. Den Kontrolleuren wird vorgeworfen, ihrer Überwachungsfunktion nur unzureichend nachzukommen und die Zielvorstellungen der Anteilseigner weitgehend aus den Augen zu verlieren. Inwieweit sich die in der Öffentlichkeit lancierte Kritik an der Effizienz deutscher Aufsichtsräte empirisch bestätigen lässt, wird in der vorliegenden Studie überprüft. Die Annäherung an die Fragestellung erfolgt über eine Analyse des systematischen Zusammenhangs zwischen Unternehmensperformance und Wechseln in den Vorständen der DAX100-Gesellschaften über den Zeitraum von 1994 bis 2001. Neben den Turnover-Performance-Beziehungen wird die Reaktion der Kapitalmarktteilnehmer auf die Wechselankündigungen betrachtet. Die Kursanalysen geben Aufschluss über die Bedeutung der personellen Eingriffe durch den Aufsichtsrat für die weitere Unternehmensentwicklung aus Sicht des Kapitalmarktes. Die Untersuchung des gesamten Wechselprozesses bildet die Basis für die Ableitung interessanter Erkenntnisse über die Anreiz- und Disziplinierungswirkung des vom Aufsichtsrat praktizierten Absetzungsmechanismus.
Banks perform important functions for the economy. Besides financial intermediation, banks provide information, liquidity, maturity- and risk-transformation (Fama, 1985). Banks ensure the transfer of liquidity from depositors to the most profitable investment projects. In addition, they perform important screening and monitoring services over investments hence contributing steadily to the efficient allocation of resources across the economy (Pathan and Faff, 2013). Since banks provide financial services all across the economy, this exposes banks (as opposed to non-banks) to systemic risk: the recent financial crisis revealed that banks can push economies into severe recessions. However, the crisis also revealed that certain bank types appear far more stable than others. For instance, cooperative banks performed better during the crisis than commercial banks. Different business models may reason these performance-differences: cooperative banks focus on relationship lending across their region, hence these banks suffered less from the collapse of the US housing market.
Since cooperative banks performed better during the crisis than commercial banks, it is quite surprising that research concerning cooperative banks is highly underrepresented in the literature. For this reason, the following three studies aim to contribute to current literature by examining three independent contemporaneous research questions in the context of cooperative banks.
Chapter 2 examines whether cooperative banks benefit from revenue diversification: Current banking literature reveals the recent trend in the overall banking industry that banks may opt for diversification by shifting their revenues to non-interest income. However, existing literature also shows that not every bank benefits from revenue diversification (Mercieca et al., 2007; Stiroh and Rumble, 2006; Goddard et al., 2008). Stiroh and Rumble (2006) find that large commercial banks (US Financial Holding Companies) perceive decreasing performance by shifting revenues towards non-interest income. Revenues from cooperative banks differ from those of commercial banks: commercial banks trade securities and derivatives, sell investment certificates and other trading assets. Concerning the lending business, commercial banks focus on providing loans for medium-sized and large companies rather than for small (private) customers. Cooperative banks rely on commission income (fees) from monetary transactions and selling insurances as a source of non-interest income. They generate most of their interest income by providing loans to small and medium-sized companies as well as to private customers in the region. These differences in revenues raise the question whether findings from Stiroh and Rumble (2006) apply to cooperative banks. For this reason, Chapter 2 evaluates a sample of German cooperative banks over the period 2005 to 2010 and aims to investigate the following research question: which cooperative banks benefit from revenue diversification?
Results show that findings from Stiroh and Rumble (2006) do not apply to cooperative banks. Revenue concentration is positive related to risk-adjusted returns (indirect effect) for cooperative banks. At the same time, non-interest income is more profitable than interest income (direct effect). The evaluation of the underlying non-interest income share shows that banks who heavily focus on non-interest income benefit by shifting towards non-interest income. This finding arises due to the fact, that the positive direct effect dominates the negative indirect effect, leading in a positive (and significant) net effect. Furthermore, results reveal a negative net effect for banks who are heavily exposed to interest generating activities. This indicates that shifting to non-interest income decreases risk-adjusted returns for these banks. Consequently, these banks do better by focusing on the interest business. Overall, results show evidence that banks need time to build capabilities, expertise and experience before trading off return and risk efficiently with regard on revenue diversification.
Chapter 3 deals with the relation between credit risk, liquidity risk, capital risk and bank efficiency: There has been rising competition in the European banking market due to technological development, deregulation and the introduction of the Euro as a common currency in recent decades. In order to remain competitive banks were forced to improve efficiency. That is, banks try to operate closer to a “best practice” production function in the sense that banks improve the input – output relation. The key question in this context is if banks improve efficiency at a cost of higher risk to compensate decreasing earnings. When it comes to bank risk, a large strand of literature discusses the issue of problem loans. Several studies identify that banks hold large shares of non-performing loans in their portfolio before becoming bankrupt (Barr and Siems, 1994; Demirgüc-Kunt, 1989). According to efficiency, studies show that the average bank generates low profits and incorporates high costs compared to the “best practice” production frontier (Fiordelisi et al., 2011; Williams, 2004). At first glance, these two issues do not seem related. However, Berger and DeYoung (1997) show that banks with poor management are less able to handle their costs (low cost-efficiency) as well as to monitor their debtors in an appropriate manner to ensure loan quality. The negative relationship between cost efficiency and non-performing loans leads to declining capital. Existing studies (e.g. Williams, 2004; Berger and DeYoung, 1997) show that banks with a low level of capital tend to engage in moral hazard behavior, which in turn can push these banks into bankruptcy.
However, the business model of cooperative banks is based on the interests of its commonly local customers (the cooperative act: § 1 GenG). This may imply that the common perception of banks engaging in moral hazard behavior may not apply to cooperative banks. Since short-term shareholder interests (as a potential factor for moral hazard behavior) play no role for cooperative banks this may support this notion. Furthermore, liquidity has been widely neglected in the existing literature, since the common perception has been that access to additional liquid funds is not an issue. However, the recent financial crisis revealed that liquidity dried up for many banks due to increased mistrust in the banking sector. Besides investigating moral hazard behavior, using data from 2005 to 2010 this study moves beyond current literature by employing a measure for liquidity risk in order to evaluate how liquidity risk relates to efficiency and capital.
Results mostly apply to current literature in this field since the empirical evaluation reveals that lower cost and profit-efficiency Granger-cause increases in credit risk. At the same time, results indicate that credit risk negatively Granger-causes cost and profit-efficiency, hence revealing a bi-directional relationship between these measures. However, most importantly, results also show a positive relationship between capital and credit risk, thus displaying that moral hazard behavior does not apply to cooperative banks. Especially the business model of cooperative banks, which is based on the interests of its commonly local customers (the cooperative act: § 1 GenG) may reason this finding. Contrary to Fiordelisi et al. (2011), results also show a negative relationship between capital and cost-efficiency, indicating that struggling cooperative banks focus on managing their cost-exposure in following periods. Concerning the employed liquidity risk measure, the authors find that banks who hold a high level of liquidity are less active in market related investments and hold high shares of equity capital. This outcome clearly reflects risk-preferences from the management of a bank.
Chapter 4 examines governance structures of cooperative banks: The financial crisis of 2007/08 led to huge distortions in the banking market. The failure of Lehman Brothers was the beginning of government interventions in various countries all over the world in order to prevent domestic economies from even further disruptions. In the aftermath of the crisis, politicians and regulators identified governance deficiencies as one major factor that contributed to the crisis. Besides existing studies in the banking literature (e.g. Beltratti and Stulz, 2012; Diamond and Rajan, 2009; Erkens et al., 2012) an OECD study from 2009 supports this notion (Kirkpatrick, 2009). Public debates increased awareness for the need of appropriate governance mechanisms at that time. Consequently, politicians and regulators called for more financial expertise on bank boards. Accordingly, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision states in principle 2 that “board members should remain qualified, individually and collectively, for their positions. They should understand their oversight and corporate governance role and be able to exercise sound, objective judgement about the affairs of the bank.” (BCBS, 2015). Taking these perceptions into consideration the prevailing question is whether financial experts on bank boards do really foster bank stability?
This chapter aims to investigate this question by referring to the study from Minton et al. (2014). In their study, the authors investigate US commercial bank holding companies between the period 2003 and 2008. The authors find that financial experts on the board of US commercial bank holding companies promote pro-cyclical bank performance. Accordingly, the authors question regulators view of more financial experts on the board leading to more banking stability.
However, Minton et al. (2014) do not examine whether their findings accrue due to financial experts who act in the interests of shareholders or due to the issue that financial experts may have a more risk-taking attitude (due to a better understanding of financial instruments) than other board members.
Supposed that their findings accrue due to financial experts who act in the interests of shareholders. Then financial experts on the board of banks where short-term shareholder interests play no role (cooperative banks) may prove beneficial with regard on bank performance during the crisis as well as in normal times. This would mean that they use their skills and expertise to contribute sustainable growth to the bank. Contrary, if this study reveals pro-cyclical bank performance related to financial experts on the board of cooperative banks, this finding may be addressed solely to the risk-taking attitude of financial experts (since short-term shareholder interests play no role). For this reason, this chapter aims to identify the channel for the relation of financial experts and bank performance by examining the following research question: Do financial experts on the board promote pro-cyclical bank performance in a setting where short-term shareholder interests play no role?
Results show that financial experts on the board of cooperative banks (data from 2006 to 2011) do not promote pro-cyclical bank performance. Contrary, results show evidence that financial experts on the board of cooperative banks appear to foster long-term bank stability. This suggests that regulators should consider ownership structure (and hence business model of banks) when imposing new regulatory constraints for financial experts on the bank board.
Die Problematik der unternehmerischen Mitbestimmung in der Europäischen Privatgesellschaft (SPE)
(2014)
Die Arbeit behandelt allgemein die Probleme, die hinsichtlich der unternehmerischen Mitbestimmung der Arbeitnehmer in der noch zu schaffenden Societas Privata Europaea (SPE) aufgetreten sind.
Insbesondere wird auf die Frage eingegangen, warum die Mitbestimmung eines der zentralen Hindernisse bei der Schöpfung eines SPE-Statuts auf europäischer Ebene darstellt.
Sodann werden verschiedene Lösungsansätze aufgezeigt wie die bestehenden Vorbehalte grundsätzlich überwunden werden könnten.
Des Weiteren wird anhand eines vielversprechenden Verordnungsentwurfs dargelegt, welche Modifikationen eine erfolgreiche Umsetzung wahrscheinlicher machen würden.
Schließlich gibt der Autor eine Einschätzung über die politischen Rahmenbedingungen des Vorhabens ab und wagt einen Blick in die Zukunft des Projekts "SPE".