Banking, Not Banking and the Valuation of Banks

Abstract

Rethinking of bank business models, fueled by the recent crisis and tightened capital requirements, is under growing attention from financial research on banks. Effects of the income structure on banks’ performance and value creation are central items. Market valuations of banks are of particular interest since they reflect combined expectations for profitability and risk. To date, studies refer to aggregated components of earnings. Hence findings provide with limited insight on the value-contribution of specific activities and, further, they tend to conflict.The present paper proposes an original investigation of the value-contribution of different activities, based on a sample of 218 quoted US Bank Holding Companies throughout 2003-2009 (a full economic cycle). With regard to an historical debate and a major issue for banks’ stakeholders, it emphasizes on the contribution of traditional banking services as opposed to various non-banking activities. The contribution of banking is found to be influenced by its components: interests on loans tend to contribute negatively but banking fees positively. Besides banking fees, the valuation of the smaller BHC is also supported by customer investment services. The larger BHC may benefit from a broader spectrum of non-banking activities, such as insurance, as opposed to interests on loans. Trading has a negative influence for all specifications. These results are robust to underlying effects on ROE and risk. The hierarchy of value-contributions is next addressed. For all samples, of which also BHC with the highest banking fees within banking income, customer investment services over-perform banking. Insurance activities under-perform banking, even for the larger BHC and BHC with lowest banking fees intensities.