Caisses d'épargne et banques coopératives en Europe

Les groupes bancaires coopératifs combinent les avantages d'un réseau décentralisé de banques indépendantes et d'une organisation centrale qui aident ces banques coopératives indépendantes à réaliser des économies d'échelle. Cet article décrit la structure organisationnelle du groupe bancaire coopératif allemand. En Allemagne les banques coopératives sont des entités indépendantes, mais coopèrent pour avoir un accès fiable à des services tels que le corporate banking , la liquidité et à des produits comme les fonds d'investissement collectifs et les assurances. Par ailleurs, le système de protection institutionnel commun oblige à une collaboration dans la gestion du risque du groupe. Toutefois les organes centraux du groupe n'ont pas l'autorité pour donner des instructions aux banques. Les défis actuels tels que la régulation et la numérisation créent des économies d'échelle. Les taux d'intérêt bas compressent la rentabilité des banques. Les banques coopératives ont réagi par des fusions, par la mise en œuvre de réductions de coûts au niveau des banques et au niveau central ainsi qu'en développant de nouvelles solutions numériques pour leurs clients et dans leurs back offices . Classification JEL : G21, G28, G32, L22, M14, M15, P13.

Cooperative banking in Poland has more than 150 years of tradition, going back to the period of Partitions. The first Polish credit associations and cooperatives were established in Greater Poland in the years 1861–1862, in the fashion of credit cooperatives for farmers established by Friedrich Raiffeisen and the so-called cooperative “people’s banks” associating craftsmen, that were founded by Franz Schultze. In 1899, on the territory of the Austrian Partition, small credit institutions, the so-called “Stefczyk Savings Unions” (“Kasy Stefczyka”), were created, associating mainly farmers, In the period of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939), Polish Agricultural Bank (Polski Bank Rolny) was established in Warsaw (1919). The bank’s task was to provide financial backing for agriculture, and in 1921 it was transformed into State Agricultural Bank (Państwowy Bank Rolny), only to become Agricultural Bank (Bank Rolny) in 1948. It was replaced by Food Economy Bank (Bank Gospodarki Żywnościowej), called into being in 1975 as a financial head office for cooperative banks which originated from saving and loan cooperatives. In the period of the Polish People’s Republic (1952–1989), state-cooperative banking was in place. The system and economy transformations that took place after 1989 caused crisis and the necessity of state intervention in the Polish cooperative banking. In the years 1990–1994 efforts were made to fix the cooperative banking system through implementation of the Act of June 24, 1994 on restructuring of cooperative banks and Food Economy Bank and on amendments to certain acts. Food Economy Bank was transformed into a joint-stock company as a bank of the National Association of cooperative banks. Besides, nine regional associations were established in the form of a joint-stock company of cooperative banks, which became shareholders of the national bank. The system and functioning of cooperative banks are currently governed by: Banking Law Act of August 29, 1997, Cooperative Law Act of September 16, 1982 and the Act of December 7, 2000 on functioning of cooperative banks, associating thereof and associating banks. The structure of cooperative banking was based on the division into cooperative banks and associating banks. Two associations of cooperative banks are currently operating in Poland: Bank of the Polish Cooperative Movement (Bank Polskiej Spółdzielczości S.A.) with its seat in Warsaw and Cooperative Banking Group – Bank (Spółdzielcza Grupa Bankowa – Bank S.A.) with its seat in Poznań. All the cooperative banks are covered by the Bank Guarantee Fund and under supervision of the Financial Supervision Authority. In 2015 the Act of December 7, 2000 on functioning of cooperative banks, associating thereof and associating banks was amended due to the changes implemented in the European Union Law (the so-called CRD IV/CRR package). Financial security of cooperative banks was increased through establishment of the Institutional Protection Scheme (IPS). Cooperative banks are an important element for development of the entire Polish banking system. Therefore, the financial supervision over the entire system of banking and Cooperative Savings and Credit Unions (SKOK) should be conducted in appropriate manner.

Zusammenfassung/Summary Das deutsche Bankensystem Befund – Probleme – Perspektiven (Teil II) Die gegenwartigen Probleme der deutschen Kreditinstitute sind nicht Ausdruck einer Krise des nationalen Bankensystems, sondern gravierender regulatorischer Unterschiede diesseits und jenseits des Atlantiks einerseits, eines kollektiven Versagens in der Risikosteuerung andererseits. Daraus ergibt sich fur alle Akteure Handlungsbedarf: Fur die Banken hinsichtlich der Risikosteuerung und der Verfeinerung und Anpassung der entsprechenden Instrumente, fur die Bankenaufsicht hinsichtlich der Fortentwicklung des Basel-II-Ansatzes, der Bewertungsmethoden in der Rechnungslegung und der Vereinheitlichung von Offenlegungs-Standards, um Interpretations- und Definitionsspielraume einzuschranken. Die Ratingagenturen schlieslich mussen sowohl hinsichtlich ihrer Methoden als auch der wirtschaftlichen Abhangigkeit von ihren Auftraggebern grosere Transparenz schaffen. Es zeigt sich, dass eine blose Marktliberalisierung dann kein wi...

Before 2007, European banks and other financial activities were characterized, on the one hand, by high income, many assets on and off balance and strong recourse to the use of leverage; on the other hand, the inappropriate use of derivatives, securitization containing collateralized debt obligation and (CDO) and credit default swap (CDS), and the conceding of subprime loans have created the conditions of the financial crisis. The lack of confidence generated in the financial market has made it increasingly pressing need for better disclosure to all stakeholders, as an important element to ease the funding of other venture capital and/or debt aimed at improving the competitiveness and growth. The quality of the relationships between the bank and the market is linked to the ability to communicate their economic and financial performance, highlighting the risks that characterize its core business. The information opacity of credit intermediaries is often caused by both managerial opportunism phenomena and by excessive cost of disclosure. The predominant literature, indeed, claims that there are many advantages of a good disclosure that results in reduction of the cost of capital (Diamond and Verrecchia, 1991), easy access to found (Linsey and Schrives, 2005), creation of more stability in the whole banking industry and consequent reduction of systemic risk (Nier and Baumann, 2006), and effective tool for avoiding banking crises (Financial Stability Board, 2012). However, other Authors argue that there are some disadvantages related to the excessive disclosure due to the complexity of financial instruments because markets are unable to incorporate additional information in a beneficial way (Hodder et al., 2001; Hassan et al., 2009; Hassan and Mohd-Saleh, 2010; Siregar et al. 2013). In addition, banks often oppose to requirements asking for higher disclosures because they determine significant costs (Mozes, 2002, Gebhardt, 2004). In order to respond to the aforementioned situation of crisis, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has issued the IFRS 7: Financial Instruments Disclosure, an ad hoc accounting standard which identifies the minimal disclosure requirements that entities must meet to communicate to investors the risks arising from financial instruments used. The value relevance of financial instruments risk disclosure is an important key factor for a transparent relationship between banks and stakeholders, in particular investors, because, first of all, the last financial crisis has revealed the weaknesses of the European banking system and related disclosure; secondly, banks’ regulatory framework is complex, so it is possible to detect cases of information opacity, because it is formulated by a range of different bodies (i.e. local banking authority, Basel Committee and European Banking Authority - EBA); lastly, a gap in the literature of the relevance of financial instruments risk disclosure in the banking sector exists. On this basis, the aim of this thesis is to test the value relevance of the financial instruments risk disclosure (FIRD) from the users’ perspective, as recommended by the IFRS 7 in the European banking sector. In particular, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France are investigated because they are countries with highest capitalization in Europe from 2007, year of IFRS 7 entry in force, to 2014, last year available. Final results show that only qualitative index has a positive effect on banks’ value, meaning that qualitative disclosure recommended by IFRS 7 is value relevant. Maybe qualitative information can be easily found because it is supposed to have a clearer language (Pucci and Tutino, 2012). Instead, the quantitative disclosure index is not relevant for investors because of uncertainty, multi-person settings with conflicts of interest, and information asymmetry.

Loan financing, especially long term bank loan financing, is important for young or small firms in Germany. A large share of all small business lending in Germany originates in public financing programs and cooperative banks, (non-cooperative) private sector credit banks as well as savings banks mediate in the assignment of loans from these programs. Our empirical analyses of this loan type provide insights into the small business loan assignment behavior of the three different bank groups in general. Using various econometric techniques, observation periods and data sources – including detailed data on 6.880 firms – we find three robust, originate results: Not only recently, but already at the beginning of the 1990s credit banks played no substantial, statistically significant role in small business lending. Cooperative and savings banks have, in contrast, a strong, significant positive influence on young, small firms’ loan access. In addition, the loan assignment behavior of the two latter groups is found to be very similar. This is an important result given the ongoing controversial discussion on reforming the German savings bank sector.

This thesis investigates three comprehensive research issues in the context of five selected Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) banking markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) during the period 1998-2010. This study is motivated by the extensive restructuring efforts that took place in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) which has shaped the banking behaviour in ASEAN countries to enable them to sustain their financial systems’ stability. As a result of the crisis, banks adopted several strategies in response to various structural and policy changes and, therefore, there were vast effects on banks’ behaviour following the AFC and pre and post the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) period. The first empirical study of this thesis investigates the impact of market power on credit risk, revenue diversification and bank stability. The findings suggest that bank market power is positively associated with credit risk and revenue diversification. Nevertheless, these associations diminished during the GFC, implying that banks with greater market power were able to better manage their non-performing loans during the crisis period. Bank stability, however, is not associated with market power. Instead, it is found to be a negative function of state-ownership, asset composition and banking freedom. Overall, even though ASEAN banks with greater market power have higher credit risk, they are more diversified thus leaving their overall bank risk unaffected. The second empirical study examines the association between net interest margin, revenue diversification and risk-adjusted profitability. The findings suggest a two-way association between net interest margin and revenue diversification. The results denote a significant inverse relationship in the period 1998-2002, indicating subsidisation between interest and fee-generating business in the aftermath of the crisis. For the latter part of the sample (2003-2010), a positive association has been reported for net interest margin and revenue diversification implying that non-interest income does not necessarily increase with the detriment of the net interest margin. The findings reveal that diversification benefits exist for the same sub-sample period i.e. after the Basel II regulations came into force around 2003. The results also suggest that in the aftermath of both crises, risk adjusted profitability declined as banks had limited scope to diversify their sources of revenue. Overall, ASEAN banks have evolved over time, moving from the worsening risk-return trade-off to the beginnings of the benefits of diversification. The third empirical study investigates the influence of the cost of deposits, market power and the business cycle on the bank capital buffer determination. The findings imply that the capital buffer is positively associated with the cost of deposits, bank market power and the business cycle. The findings indicate that the higher the cost of deposits and the greater their market power, banks tend to hold a greater capital buffer. Furthermore, the capital buffer can vary pro-cyclically with the business cycle suggesting that banks can increase their capital buffers by expanding through various lending during economic upturns which will provide opportunities for banks to make use of this excess capital during recessions. Further, the findings suggest that the banking sector can contribute to the performance of the economy if they hold sufficient buffers and retain a healthy flow of credit when the economy is in crisis. This analysis provides some insight into ASEAN banks’ response to Basel III, which indicates that these banks will find it much harder to comply with the new regulations. This study contributes to the literature through providing evidence of the ASEAN banks’ diverse responses in the aftermath of the AFC and pre- and post-GFC with regard to the research issues. In addition, this thesis adds to the limited, but fast growing, literature on bank market power by using an improved version of the Lerner index in the form of a Funding adjusted Lerner index. Regarding the methodology, unlike other studies, this thesis extends the literature by addressing endogeneity by employing the GMM method for estimation. In addition, this thesis is includes a broader set of bank-specific, country-specific and industry-specific determinants together to address the research issues. Apart from the academic contributions, this thesis offers several implications for bankers, shareholders and regulators. The regional focus of the analysis provides useful insights for ASEAN banks for future policy formulation involving bank market power, credit risk, revenue diversification, bank stability, net interest margin, cost of deposits and the business cycle, given the restructured banking system in the region.

The core principles of financial crisis management call upon central banks to lend freely, against good quality collateral, and at a penalty rate of interest, to solvent but illiquid banks and other financial institutions. While often taken for granted, these principles were designed for a world in which central banks have the capacity to create money denominated in the domestic currency, and where banks and other financial institutions issue deposits and other short-term liabilities denominated in the same currency. Unfortunately, this is not the world in which we live. The application of these principles is far from straightforward where financial institutions rely on short-term foreign currency liabilities as a source of financing. This is the world of the Eurodollar market. The global financial crisis vividly illustrated the potential systemic risks arising from the existence of a large Eurodollar market. Faced with a systemic foreign currency liquidity crisis, central banks struggled to secure access to the foreign currency reserves needed to provide emergency liquidity assistance to their domestic banking systems. In response, the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks established a network of swap lines with the objective of providing foreign currency liquidity assistance to the international financial system. The central bank swap lines have been hailed as one of the most important and effective policy responses to the financial crisis. However, while it may be tempting to view them as an effective prophylactic against future foreign currency liquidity crises, the current structure of the swap lines fails to establish truly credible international commitments or constrain the moral hazard problems stemming from this ambitious form of state-sponsored liquidity insurance. This paper examines the unique policy challenges posed by foreign currency liquidity problems, along with how to build a more effective framework for the provision of foreign currency liquidity assistance.

Scanning the record books or, more readily, a visit to the website of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) reveals a startling fact. Bank closure by Nigerian regulators in the late 20th century era of financial deregulation is not a new phenomenon. However, it is absolutely a last resort, and not an activity that is ever undertaken lightly. Between 1994 and 2006, over 40 banking institutions were closed or had their licences revoked by the Central Bank of Nigeria.1 Going down memory lane, names such as Alpha Merchant Bank Plc, Commerce Bank Plc, Gulf Bank Limited, North-South Bank Nigeria Plc and United Commercial Bank Limited feature prominently on the list. But, truth be told, those banks were relatively small compared with the banks that emerged post-consolidation in 2006.

Giuseppe Toniolo must be recognised as one of the leading Italian economists animating the debate on the role of credit at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. While his contribution was limited on theoretical grounds, it must be acknowledged that his strong reference to ethics conferred a novel and heterodox colour on his work. Toniolo accepted the view of money as goods and the bank as intermediary but, in his criticism of capitalism coloured by Catholic ideals, he did not fail to underline the risks involved in permitting capital to gain dominion over labour and therefore over man. The central role of ethics in Toniolo's work emerges clearly from his analysis of income distribution and the definition of interest rates. He criticised Bohm-Bawerk's theory of capital and interest, suggesting that the latter attributed an intrinsically productive value to capital. Some of Toniolo's reflections regarding speculation are of undoubted interest today for their modernity. If Catholic morality had placed man and labour at the centre, the new social and economic order, he observed, had made capital the protagonist. Such a change had paved the way for usury, speculation and monopoly. Toniolo underlined the fact that the economic system no longer favoured the expansion of productivity and social wealth, preferring rather to encourage financial speculation. It was therefore essential in his opinion for capital to re-assume its original role, so as to be no longer a cause of crisis and change in income distribution. Toniolo called on the banking system to fulfil an important task for the progress of social economy, not however without a drastic renewal of both its operators and its instruments. Emblematic of Toniolo's approach is the central role attributed to the banks, especially the people's cooperative banks, in order to remedy a number of financial crises threatening the Italian economy of his time.

The regulation of an industry is generally motivated by market imperfections and/or (the risk of) market failures that can be extremely costly for the society. This implies that there are ‘gains’ associated with such regulation. However, regulation is not costless, and it is vital that the ‘cost’ of regulation does not exceed its expected gain. The deregulation of financial markets in many countries in the eighties was driven by this matter of course. Then the objective was to increase market efficiency by removing regulatory constraints. Even though new regulations in the form of capital adequacy requirements (i.e. the Basel I and II accords) were subsequently imposed, it is important to bear this in mind when further re-regulation of the banking industry is on the agenda in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Regulation of the banking industry is a balancing act! On one hand, as for example Lind (2005) points out, there are strong reasons for the prudential regulation of banks in order to mitigate their adoption of overly risky strategies; banks’ asset transformation through credit and liquidity creating activities is intrinsically vulnerable, and when the risk exposures of banks are high even minor disturbances in this transformation process can jeopardize the overall financial stability of the system. Moreover, as banks are the major providers of payment services, the solidity and soundness of these institutions are also crucial for trade and other payment- related activities in an economy.

The duty of transformation for the cooperative banks over the threshold imposed by the recent Italian's reform pursuant to decree-law 24 January 2015, n. 3 concerning urgent measures for the banking system and investment requires some systematic order reflections in relation to the survival of the «cooperative banking type». In fact, the choice of the Italian legislator, simply based on the increase in asset value capitalized, it seems to argue for a final overcoming of the cooperative bank model for the exercise of banking on the presumption of the supremacy of the spa governance model. The reasons of a choice so radical and difficult to understand for many seems to be able to bring the needs, in fact disvelate by the BCE, to homogenize the governance of the credit institutions in order to better implement the prudential regulations imposed by CRV4 and the transposition of BRRD for the prevention and resolution of banking groups.

The policy response to the recent financial crisis has broadly focused on two themes: 1) Increasing the banking sectors’ resilience to future financial shocks: 2) Improving credit availability to households and firms via lowering both short and long-term interest rates and thereby affecting short-term output and inflation. This dissertation studies how banks and firms have responded to these policy measures. The dissertation comprises of three chapters. The first two analyze the impact of capital regulation on bank lending for two different jurisdictions - United States and Switzerland. The third evaluates the response of U.S. non-financial firms to lower interest rates. The first chapter is joint work with Luisa Lambertini. We estimate the impact of bank capital regulation on lending spreads. We use U.S. firm-level data on syndicated loans matched with Bank Holding Company (BHC) data for the lending banks in our panel regressions. We find that higher bank capital leads to an increase in the loan pricing. Further, we investigate if stress test failure under the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review leads to higher loan spreads, since financial institutions that failed were required to raise capital in the short run. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we find: 1) BHCs that failed the stress tests increased their loan pricing; 2) Loan pricing is higher for all banks after the commencement of the stress tests. These findings suggest that greater regulatory oversight and higher capital requirements have made syndicated loans more costly for firms. The second chapter is joint work with Luisa Lambertini, Dan Wunderli and Robert Bichsel. We use confidential loan-by-loan data of Swiss banks to study the impact of higher capital requirements on lending. Our data allows us to trace the link between bank capital and new credit granted at the bank level. Additionally bank-specific variation of capital targets allows us to analyze how deviation from the regulatory capital target impacts loan pricing and volume. We find that tighter capital regulation has small but statistically significant short-term effects on loan pricing and growth. We do not find a permanent effect of higher capital ratios on loan growth. In the third chapter, I study the behavior of U.S. non-financial corporates after the recent financial crisis. I document an increase in the real debt holdings and correspondingly the book leverage for these firms. Controlling for firm and time fixed-effects, I find a higher long-term debt to asset ratio to be associated with lower capital expenditures and growth in fixed capital post-crisis. This is also true for financially unconstrained firms, as determined by the Whited-Wu index, vis-a-vis pre-crisis. Moreover, firms with a higher share of long-term debt after the crisis appear to have a greater likelihood of repurchasing shares and larger dollar payouts to equity holders. The evidence points to the fact that any increase in long-term debt has had an impact on firms' capital structure but no positive effect on real investment.

Since the 1980s, the world of banking has changed considerably. Deregulation, internationalization, financial crises and reregulation are just some of the many changes that have affected banking business (Batiz-Lazo and Wood, 2003; Power, 2004; Larson et al., 2011). Under the influence of their external environment, banks have become larger, more diversified, international and competitive (Goddard et al., 2007; Wilson et al., 2010) prompting the need for new sources of income, complex tools for risk assessment and risk mitigation as well as greater cost- and productivity consciousness (Muir et al., 2011:94).

The 2007 global financial crisis brought sharply into focus the need for macroprudential policy as a means of controlling systemic financial stability. This has become a focal point for policy-makers and numerous central banks, including the Bank of Canada, but it has its drawbacks, particularly here in Canada. As a counterbalance to microprudential policy, the idea of a macroprudential outlook reaches beyond the notion that as long as every banking institution is healthy, financial stability is assured. Macroprudential policy recognizes that all those financial institutions are linked, and that stability at the individual level may translate to fragility and uncertainty at the macro level. There are two approaches to macroprudential policy, and both come with downsides. One approach examines the network factor, in which banks are linked through their inter-connected financial transactions. A domino effect can thus be created; when one bank defaults, it causes a chain reaction down the line, creating instability in other banks in the network. The extent of this contagion of instability can be clearly observed through this model; unfortunately, it requires the use of detailed information typically available only to a limited circle of bank supervisors. The second approach gleans information from bank stock prices in a poorly performing market. This information is easily available and accessed, but the downside is the lack of clear understanding on how exactly these shocks travel through the complex links of the global banking system. Canada’s banking system is small and has only six major banks. However, it is important to understand how they are interconnected and how each individual bank can contribute to overall risk. Not only do banks need to be sufficiently capitalized in the normal business cycle, but it may be worthwhile for the sake of overall financial stability to create mechanisms, as regulators in some countries are doing, that require banks to hold more capital in good economic times so that they can use it as a buffer in case of a downturn. Another important macroprudential tool is to identify how much each bank contributes to systemic risk. This would entail identifying the banks that pose a greater threat to stability and having them hold extra capital. Assigning proper capital requirements is, however, not as straightforward as it may seem as the risk of the banking system changes when capital requirements change. One study has shown that when properly done such a requirement can reduce by one-quarter the probability of a financial crisis. Implementing macroprudential policy in Canada faces some challenges. With both housing prices and the level of Canadians’ personal debt high, sudden corrections to the financial system can create problems. Also, the interconnections between Canadian and foreign banks could result in the former being much more greatly influenced by financial-crisis spillover from the latter, something Canada generally avoided during the 2007 economic meltdown. There’s no consensus as yet on the objectives of macroprudential policy. However, it is a necessary complement to microprudential policy and provides a means of managing systemic risk with the goal of greater global financial stability.

Si le secteur bancaire allemand a connu un mouvement de consolidation qui s’est accéléré suite à la crise financière, le pays compte toujours un grand nombre d’établissements bancaires. Alors que l’activité économique était morose en Allemagne au milieu des années 2000, les banques allemandes ont cherché à l’étranger des sources de revenus ; certaines d’entre elles ont ainsi massivement investi dans des produits structurés. Par conséquent, la crise financière entre 2007 et 2009 a plus fortement affecté les banques allemandes que celles des autres pays de la zone euro. La Commission européenne a joué un rôle important dans la restructuration du secteur, exigeant notamment une forte réduction des bilans des banques ayant bénéficié du soutien public – et le démantèlement de l’une d’entre elles. Depuis 2010, le secteur bancaire allemand a retrouvé le chemin des bénéfices et apparaît plus robuste via l’augmentation des fonds propres et la réduction des bilans. Toutefois le levier d’endettement reste important et la rentabilité faible dans un contexte de forte concurrence sur le marché domestique, de plus, certaines banques sont fortement affectées par la crise du secteur maritime. Classification JEL : G01, G21, G28.