Merchant Banks Research Articles

Grounding the financialization of farmland: perspectives on financial actors as new land owners in rural Australia

Sparked by the conjunction of food, fuel, and financial crises, there has been an increasing awareness in recent years of the scarce and finite character of natural resources. Productive resources such as agricultural land have been touted by financial actors—such as merchant banks, pension funds, and investment companies—as providing the basis for a range of new “alternative” financial asset classes and products. While the drivers, motives, and rationales behind the increasing interest of turning farmland into a financial asset class have been traced by a number of scholars, the interpretations of, and interactions with, financial actors at the community level have received less attention. Based on qualitative research in rural Australia, this paper reveals the grounds on which finance-backed investments have been accepted and accommodated by communities in rural Australia and delineates the reasons that have led to feelings of unease or refusal. The paper thereby demonstrates that the financialization of farmland is neither abstract nor one-sided but rather a multidimensional process that not only includes financial actors but also the impacted rural populations in various ways. Positioning the activities of financial actors in Australia within the emerging research on the financialization of farmland, the paper endorses context-sensitive analyses to better interpret these recent transformations of the agri-food system.

The Processor and the Contractual Matrix in a Card Scheme: How Privity Fell and Resurrected in Aldo V. Moneris

Participants in a typical interbank payment card transaction are a cardholder, a merchant, an issuing bank and an acquirer (the merchant's bank). The issuer incurs a payment obligation, which benefits either the payee-merchant or the acquirer. The issuer and acquirer are member banks in a card network asscoiation that establishes rules and standards governing the issuance and use of the cards.

Tuscan merchants in Andalusia: a historiographical debate

This study intervenes in the debate concerning the crisis of the Mediterranean world and its merchant bankers following the European expansion, shedding new light on the presence and role of Tuscan merchants in Andalusia during the sixteenth century. Their business strategy was more successful than previously thought: this assumption comes from comparisons between quantitative data and the descriptions offered by Tuscan sources, as well as the written documentation held by Spanish archives. Their networks, which included the main economic hubs of Europe, as well as the financial instruments they would use, allowed the Tuscan merchants to play a role of paramount importance in the Andalusian market. In addition, they invested money in the transatlantic trade, in the manufacturing activities of the West Indies and, in general, in other financial and insurance enterprises.

The role of institutional investors as the next frontier in corporate governance: A case on Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE)

Institutional investors are financial institutions that accept funds from third parties for investment in their own name and act on behalf of parties as such. They include commercial banks, Non-Banking Financial Institutions (NBFIs), insurance companies, merchant banks and broker houses, state-owned companies, asset-management companies, mutual funds and other manufacturing companies. Institutional investors are a major force in many capital markets. In case of Bangladesh, the capital market has been going through an image crisis after 2010 capital market crash. For that, institutional investors are still on the sideline due to lack of confidence. Nevertheless, for the sake of corporate governance of the overall capital market, engagement of institutional investors is crucial and much required. The aim of the study is to give a general overview of institutional investors as a next big thing in corporate governance and a theoretical review of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE). It is a study that has been conducted based on only Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) perspective. It has shed light on the major institutional investors of Dhaka Stock Exchange and it has been identified that private commercial banks are (PCBs) are the largest investor followed by other institutional investors. Under this study, several areas have been identified which needs reforms and improvement. At the end of it, along with the concluding remarks, few points as suggestions are proposed for the institutional investors of Bangladesh based on the findings.

An Overview of Financial System in Indian Context

Financial services can be defined as the product and services offered by Institutions like banks, Various kinds of financial transactions and other related activities like loans, insurance, credit cards, investment opportunities and money management as well as providing information on the stock market and other issue like market trends comes under financial services. The present paper is conceptual in nature. The basic objective of study will examine the financial services basically dealing with merchant banks, credit card, companies’ consumer finance companies stock brokerages or management of money. In the term of earning financial services are the largest industry in the world that represents 20% of the market capitalization along with, the various componets of financial and its role shall be explored in Indian context. Lastly, this study will reflect the limitation and coclusion of financial system.

Drivers of employee propensity to endorse their corporate brand

Employees play an important role in building corporate brand equity both at their places of work and in their interactions with friends and family. The purpose of this study was to test the relative roles of brand knowledge and engagement of employees in predicting their propensity to endorse their organisation’s brand to friends and family. An e-mail survey was administered to employees of a large South African retail and merchant bank. Result of a moderated regression confirmed that, not only do both employee engagement and brand knowledge play an important in predicting their likelihood to endorse their brand, but that employee engagement moderates the relationship between employees’ brand knowledge and their propensity to endorse. We discuss the relevance of our findings, not only to scholars interested in the role played by employees in building corporate brand equity, but also for brand and human resources managers.

The Fallacy of Heinrich Heine: Even Financial Capital Can Do Harm in the Long Term

This paper deals with several statements of Heinrich Heine regarding the banking business of the early 19th century, especially the Rothschild family. It demonstrates that Heine, at least up to a certain degree, was disposed to accept the role and power of financiers, because he was of the opinion that their influence was more vulnerable and contestable than the position of other power groups of society. This opinion was backed by the fact that at Heine’s time the rise of successful merchant bankers usually was only of temporary nature, as losses and bankruptcies occurred quite often. This leads to interesting conclusions regarding the necessity of bank resolution regimes in times of crisis.

Collateralization, Leverage, and Systemic Risk

We describe a general equilibrium model with a banking system, with the deposit bank collecting deposits from households and the merchant bank providing funds to firms. The merchant bank borrows collateralized short-term funds from the deposit bank. In a financial downturn, as the value of collateral goes down, the merchant bank has to sell assets with short notice, reinforcing the crisis, and default if its cash buffer is insufficient. The deposit bank suffers from the loss due to the depreciated assets. If the value of its assets is insufficient to cover deposits, it also defaults. Deposits are insured by the government. The premium paid by the deposit bank is the expected loss on the deposits. Systemic risk is defined as the expected loss on deposits under stress, i.e., in a financial crisis. We calibrate the model on the U.S. economy and show how this measure behaves under stress.

Someday My Prince Will Come: The Rolling Stones and the Commodification of Rock

In 1965 the emergent English rhythm and blues band the Rolling Stones toured New Zealand and Australia, headlining a three-week package tour featuring overseas artists with support from local performers. They often played local halls, giving up to 13 performances a week to audiences sometimes of only a few hundred, with ticket prices between (Australian) $1.50 and $3.50. Their set drew heavily on R&B covers, and was a standard 20 minutes or so. For the tour the band received $12,500 per week, and promoter Harry M. Miller refused to pay the excess baggage charge to enable them to bring their own amplifiers. Subsequently, through a series of critically and commercially successful recordings, with an emphasis on self-written material, the Stones consolidated their status as “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.” In particular, I consider the key role played by merchant banker Prince Loewenstein in restructuring the Stones’ business model in the 1970s and 1980s. With Loewenstein as adviser, and with Jagger playing a leading role, the Stones developed a business structure designed to maximize income from touring, recording, and music publishing, and minimize their exposure to UK tax by living abroad and domiciling their companies in more advantageous territories such as the Netherlands.

Responding to a Shadow Banking Crisis: The Lessons of 1763

In August 1763, northern Europe experienced a financial crisis with numerous parallels to the 2008 Lehman episode. The crisis affected merchant banks that were funded by short‐term credit instead of deposits. We use archival data to show that these “shadow” banks suffered a sudden loss of funding after the failure of a major bank. The central bank at the hub of the crisis, the Bank of Amsterdam, responded by broadening the range of collateral it accepted. The data also show how this emergency liquidity helped to contain the crisis, by preventing the collapse of at least two other major banks.

Collateralization, Leverage, and Stressed Expected Loss

We describe a general equilibrium model with a banking system in which the deposit bank collects deposits from households and the merchant bank provides funds to firms. Merchant banks borrow collateralized short-term funds from deposit banks. In a financial downturn, as the value of collateral decreases, the merchant bank must sell assets on short notice, reinforcing the crisis, and default if their cash buffer is insufficient. The deposit bank suffers from loss because of the depreciated assets. If the value of the deposit bank’s assets is insufficient to cover deposits, it also defaults. Deposits are insured by the government. The premium paid by the deposit bank is its expected loss on the deposits. We define the bank’s capital shortfall in the crisis as the expected loss on deposits under stress. We calibrate the model on the U.S. economy and show how this measure of stressed expected loss behaves. In the absence of regulation, a 40% decline of the securities market would induce a loss of 17.8% in the ex-ante value of the assets or 80.7% of the ex-ante value of the equity.

Corporate Law and Self-Regulation

This paper explores the different ways in which market actors are “co-opted” as corporate law regulators. It considers the the preconditions for generating “endogenous self-regulation” through the lens of the formation and operation of the UK Takeover Code and Panel. The paper argues that its incontrovertible success as a command, control and surveillance regulator is in large part attributable to merchant (investment) banking control over the production of the original Code and the ways in which the Code generates direct and indirect income opportunities for investment bankers in takeover activity, referred to in the paper as “bribing the quarterback”. The paper also uses the Takeover Panel example to explore the unexpected regulatory biases that are generated by the survival and legitimacy concerns of the self-regulator itself. From endogenous self-regulation, the paper moves onto consider “market-controlled” regulation where the state directly co-opts market actors as regualators. Using the example of “comply or explain” corporate governance codes the paper explores the powerful market-based enforcement drivers and argues that these drivers interact with a “comply or explain” regulatory outlook that is likely to, and does, lead to sub-optimal regulation that overweights accountability concerns. Setting these regulatory effects alongside the regulatory biases identified in the analysis of the Takeover Code, the paper shows that the regulatory biases generated by self-regulation are more muli-faceted than, and often inconsistent with, the standard account that self-regulation is likely to generate rules that favour the regulated.

Assessment of the Impact and Challenges of Basel Ii Implementation on the Risk Management Practices In Nigerian Banks

Risk management plays an important role in ensuring the safety and survival of banking institutions. Basel II Accord is an international regulatory attempt aimed at strengthening the risk management practices in the internationally active banks. The Basel II Accord is the framework developed in 1999 by the Central Banks of G10 countries to regulate the risk management process in large internationally active banks in their domains and in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries. The framework was issued principally to address the issue of the minimum capital requirements that have to be kept aside by banks, to be able to face any economic stress, and for protecting the international financial system from financial crises that could lead to the collapse of banks. This research examines the impact and challenges of Basel II on the risk management practices in Nigerian banks, and the extent of progress the banks have made in implementing the Accord within the milieu of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s guidelines. The sample population comprised all the banking institutions in Nigeria, including commercial banks, mortgage banks, finance houses and merchant banks. A random sample of 15 commercial banks was taken from which sampling units of 60 respondents with risk and control functions were purposively selected from each of the sampled banks. What informed the choice of the commercial banks as the sample source was because the Central Bank of Nigeria appeared to have considered the commercial banks as the centre focus of Basel II implementation for a start. Four hypotheses were formulated to validate the observations that necessitated the study. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using the ANOVA, regression and t-test models. The following findings were made from the study after testing the hypotheses formulated for the study: All the Nigerian banks face almost the same sets of challenges in implementing Basel II requirements; the Basel II Accord caused significant change in capital measurement and allocation; the Accord has improved the risk management practices in Nigerian banks, and Nigerian banks have made some progress in Basel II implementation project. At the end of the research, it was recommended that the Central Bank of Nigeria increase the level of awareness on Basel Accord; that the CBN should immediately enforce the Basel II regulations on all operators in the banking industry rather than focusing on commercial banks; that the banks should enlighten their Boards and senior management staff on the implications of Basel Accord on the banks’ businesses, and finally that the banks should find smarter ways to raise further capital in response to Basel II requirement.

Investment Banking as a Subject of Study

Investment Banking is an American synonym of Merchant Banking . Merchant Banking originated in the 13 th century in the European countries . As far as the origin of this term is concerned , it is told that earlier Merchants used to attend to extending of loans and arranging finance for trade but as the time passed the subject of banking assumed more importance and the Merchants switched over to banking activities ,hence the term Merchant Banking .Rapid industrialization in India has led to the setting up of new industrial units and Expansion ,Diversification , and Modernization of existing units ..The need for having expert advice and the guidance of Specialists in the field has therefore become Imperative .Only Merchant Banking can offer these services .In India ,Investment Bbankers are often called Merchant Bankers .Merchant Banking is a Non-Banking Financial activity similar to banking .Merchant Banks are neither Merchants nor are they necessarily Banks. These are Financial Institutions providing valuable services like acceptance of bills of exchange, corporate finance ,Portfolio Management and Banking services .According to J.A.P Herbert king ,”Merchant “Banking is what Merchant do .”M.J.Rosenberg has defined Merchant Bank ,as “an organization that underwrites securities for corporations ,advices such clients on Mergers ,and is involved in the ownership of commercial ventures” .E.Reid in his presidential address to Institute of Bankers in London stated that “these organizations are sometimes Banks which are not Merchants ,and sometimes Merchants who are not Banks and sometimes houses which are neither Merchants nor Banks .The notification of the Ministry of Finance ,India defines a Merchant as ,”any person who is engaged in the business of Issue Management either by making arrangements regarding selling ,buying or subscribing to the securities as Manager ,Consultant Adviser ;or one rendering Corporate Advisory services in relation to such activities in the management “.Investment Bankers may gradually replace Merchant Bankers in India. With Merchant Banks / Issuing Houses in the UK already converting to Investment Banks ,or at least performing some of their functions, India would not be far behind. Merchant Banking in India is non- fund -based except Underwriting .Investment Banking is both fee and fund –based .Investment Bankers commit their own funds .

A review of researches on internet finance

The internet and finance are accelerating into integration in the 21st century. Internet finance was firstly proposed by Ma Weihua, the former president of China Merchants Bank in July 2012. On the basis of 146 latest research literatures selected from CSSCI journals, Chinese core journals, authoritative magazines and related newspapers, this paper summarised the current research progress and trend about internet finance in China according to three dimensions, such as the sources of journals, research subjects and research contents. Then this paper summarised the researches about internet finance in the Western world. The research shows that the current researches about internet finance are not only shallow and superficial, but also lack the theoretical analyses and model applications; and the wealth-based and bank-based internet finance will be the research focus in the future.

Competition Policy and Regulation in Credit Card Markets: Insights from Single-Sided Market Analysis

This paper reexamines the economics of two common features of credit card networks: the interchange fee paid by merchant banks, or acquirers, to cardholder banks, or issuers; and the restraint commonly placed on merchants against surcharging for credit card transactions. We show that the parallels with the economics of conventional one-sided markets offer insights that have been overlooked in the credit card economics literature, which stresses the two-sided nature of the market. The characterization of the optimal interchange fee is equivalent to the Dorfman-Steiner theorem from conventional price theory. The principle that the interchange fee maximizes output when an optimum exists and the possibility of interchange fee neutrality also have precise parallels in one-sided markets with promotion. Our analysis shows that the no-surcharge rule is equivalent to a retail MFN constraint. The no-surcharge rule raises prices to merchants due to a competition-suppression effect as well as a cost-externalization effect. The market condition underlying interchange neutrality (when surcharging is allowed) eliminates the impact of the no-surcharge rule in the case of a credit-card duopoly. Yet the same condition magnifies the impact in the presence of cash customers.

A Magyar korona eddig ismert legkorábbi autentikus ábrázolásának keletkezéséről

In the past 35 years or so, scores of theories, some bordering on legend, have emerged about the origin of the earliest known authentic representation of the Holy Crown of Hungary. Systematic historical and art historical research, however, has reconstructed convincingly the circumstances of its creation. Contrary to the majority of assumptions proposed until now, it can now be safely declared that the earliest representation of the Hungarian crown jewel has nothing to do with the – actually fictitious – possession of the crown by the Fugger family in the mid-15th century. The handwritten work namely, in which the image survived, is not a Fuggerchronik of Munich but the history of the Habsburg dynasty (Ehrenspiegel des Hauses Österreich) written for the family of the great merchant banker, Johann Jakob Fugger (1516–1575) by the self-taught town historian, genealogist and heraldist Clemens Jäger from Augsburg (c. 1500–1561). The two-tome manuscript of nearly 800 folios with thousands of coats of arms and hundreds of illuminations is preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. The earliest known depiction of the crown was made replicas of which were unknown until recently but were identified by the authors in three richly illuminated handwritten copies of the Ehrenspiegel. All were made in Innsbruck as the outcome of the court art and art patronage of the archdukes Ferdinand and Maximilian of Tyrol in the late 16th and early 17th century. By dating the manuscripts kept today in Munich, Vienna and Dresden more accurately and analysing the crown depictions in them, the – until recently – controversial chronology of the Ehrenspiegel copies could be clarified reassuringly. A revised version commissioned by Emperor Leopold I was completed by 1668 and was also released in print by the Endter press in Nuremberg with “updated” text by the German poet Sigmund von Birken. This version also included the image of the Hungarian crown, but the publisher replaced the 16th century depiction with a more up-to-date one. It adopted the crown representation on the title-page of Mausoleum (printed in Nuremberg 1664), a series of Hungarian ruler portraits completed a little earlier upon commission from a Hungarian aristocrat and art patron, Chief Justice of Hungary (1655–1671), Count Ferenc Nádasdy. It must be attributed to the publisher’s demand for authenticity that added to the crown from the Mausoleum, which in basic forms emulated the crown image illustrating the famous tract of guardian of the crown Péter Révay published in Augsburg 1613 (De Sacrae Coronae regni Hungariae ortu... Commentarius) and reformulated several times later, he also enclosed the title-page of the politics historical work by Martin Schödel (Respublica et status Regni Hungariae, Leiden 1634) for the purpose of providing more accurate material details. A German handwritten petition by Clemens Jäger, the author of the Habsburg family history, for a coat of arms and crown representation has been recovered in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. In it he was inquiring about the Holy Crown with reference to the work (Rerum Ungaricarum decades) of the Italian historiographer of Matthias Corvinus, the noted humanist Antonio Bonfini. This source permits us to declare: the earliest authentic representation of the Hungarian crown was made in Augsburg between April 1553 (the terminus post quem for the sending of the petition from Augsburg to Vienna) and November 1561 (the death of Jäger). Confuting earlier presumptions we can contend that instead of some mid-15th or early 16th century model, Jäger used a wholly contemporary reproduction. It showed the crown kept in the Habsburg court in Vienna from the beginning of September 1551 depicted – if we are not mistaken – by the copperplate engraver and draughtsman of antiquities (Antiquitetabconterfetter) Hans Sebald Lautensack served in Vienna from August 1554, who was in close contact with the famous Vienna court historiographer who also knew Jäger, Wolfgang Lazius. Lautensack also engraved a portrait of Lazius in 1554. Some data suggest that our safe dating (1553–1561) can be reduced to the interval between the late summer of 1554 and 1556, between the beginning of Lautensack’s service in Vienna and the publication of the historian Lazius’s great map of Hungary (1556), the latter adorned with a Holy Crown with pendants. To conclude, the earliest detailed and authentic representation of the Hungarian crown was the outcome of the collaboration of Central European historiographers, first of all historians of Augsburg and Vienna, genealogists, heraldists and engravers, without the involvement of Hungarians, as far as we know. Not that this fact would reduce in any way its outstanding significance or peculiar value.

El ferrocarril Gran Oeste Argentino y el banco inglés de inversión J. S. Morgan & Co., 1887-1897

<p><span style="color: #000000; font-family: verdana; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none;">El banco de inversión J. S. Morgan & Co. tomó el control del Ferrocarril Gran Oeste Argentino para proteger el valor de los títulos de dicha compañía que conservaba en su poder. La crisis de 1890 había puesto en peligro la supervivencia de la empresa de transportes. La consulta de los documentos que se conservan en el archivo del banco, que se encuentra en la Guildhall Library de Londres, permite reconstruir la forma en que ejerció ese control, los pasos seguidos para lograr que la empresa superara los efectos de la crisis y las ventajas que obtuvo respecto de otros inversores por su posición dominante.</span></p>

Can China lead?: reaching the limits of power and growth

It's time to rethink the way we think about China. In this thought-provoking book, noted experts from Harvard Business School and the Wharton School assert that while has experienced remarkable economic growth in recent decades (nearly 10 percent for more than thirty years), it now faces major challenges--tests that could shift the country's political and economic trajectory. A lack of accountability, transparency, and ease of operating in China--combined with growing evidence of high-level corruption--has made domestic and foreign businesspeople increasingly wary of the China model. These issues have deep roots in Chinese history and the country's political system. Regina M. Abrami of the Wharton School and William C. Kirby and F. Warren McFarlan of Harvard Business School contend that the country's dynamic private sector could be a source of sustainable growth, but it is constrained by political favoritism toward state-owned corporations. Disruptive innovation, research, and development are limited by concerns about intellectual property protection. Most significant of all is the question of China's political future: does a system that has overseen dramatic transformations in recent years now have the capacity to transform itself? Based on a new and popular course taught by the authors at Harvard Business School, this book draws on more than thirty Harvard Business School case studies on Chinese and foreign companies doing business in the region, including Sealed Air, Merchants Bank, Mobile, Wanxiang Group, Microsoft, UFIDA, and others. Can Lead? asserts that is at an inflection point that cannot be ignored. An understanding of the forces that continue to shape its business landscape is crucial to establishing--and maintaining--a successful enterprise in China.

Collateral composition, diversification risk, and systemically important merchant banks

The impact of collateral diversification by non-financial firms on systemic risk is studied in a general equilibrium model with standard production functions and mixed debt-equity financing. Systemic risk comes about as soon as firms diversify their collateral by holding claims on a big wholesale (merchant) bank whose asset side includes claims on the same producer set. The merchant bank sector proves to be fragile (has a short distance to default) regardless of competition. In this setting, the policy response, consisting in official guarantees for the merchant bank's liabilities, entails considerable government loss risk. An alternative without the need for public sector involvement is to encourage systemically important merchant banks to introduce a simple bail-in mechanism by restricting their liabilities to contingent convertible bonds. This line of regulatory policy is particularly relevant to the containment of systemic events in globally leveraged economies serviced by big international banks outside host country regulatory control.