International capital flow and domestic financial market structures explain why some countries are more vulnerable to banking crises.

Quick! Name an industry that touches people's lives on an everyday or frequent basis. Perhaps you thought of grocery stores or something sexy like internet retailing, but chances are you didn't think of banking. Yet, most likely you interact with a bank every time you're paid and when you pay your bills. Banks facilitate the flow of money through the economy and even if you don't interact with a bank daily, the businesses you deal with on a daily basis do. For all the interaction people have with banks, few understand how they work or why they work. Even fewer understand why they should consider including bank stocks in their investment portfolio. There are a lot of misconceptions about banks, including understanding what they are and what they do. For many people the word "bank" evokes images of receiving a toaster upon opening an account, or thoughts of security related to the storing of precious items in a safety deposit box. Others might go further and tap their inner Michael Moore and talk about how banks are greedy and evil. It's our belief that banks aren't just places to store idle savings (on which you receive virtually nothing in interest) or to cash checks, but that they should be an integral part of an investor's portfolio. The goal of this book is to provide you with a foundation and framework with which you can both begin to understand banks, but also learn the basic tools used to analyze banks as investments.

We analyze how bank profitability impacts financial stability from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. We first develop a theoretical model of the relationship between bank profitability and financial stability by exploring the role of non-interest income and retail-oriented business models. We then conduct panel regression analysis to examine the empirical determinants of bank risks and profitability, and how the level and the source of bank profitability affect risks for 431 publicly traded banks (U.S., advanced Europe, and GSIBs) from 2004 to 2017. Results reveal that profitability is negatively associated with both a bank’s contribution to systemic risk and its idiosyncratic risk, and an over-reliance on non-interest income, wholesale funding and leverage is associated with higher risks. Low competition is associated with low idiosyncratic risk but a high contribution to systemic risk. Lastly, the problem loans ratio and the cost-to-income ratio are found to be key factors that influence bank profitability. The paper’s findings suggest that policy makers should strive to better understand the source of bank profitability, especially where there is an over-reliance on market-based non-interest income, leverage, and wholesale funding.

The effect of bank capital on lending is a critical determinant of the linkage between financial conditions and real activity, and has received especial attention in the recent financial crisis. The authors use panel-regression techniques to study the lending of large bank holding companies (BHCs) and find small effects of capital on lending. They then consider the effect of capital ratios on lending using a variant of Lown and Morgan's VAR model, and again find modest effects of bank capital ratio changes on lending. The authors¿ estimated models are then used to understand recent developments in bank lending and, in particular, to consider the role of TARP-related capital injections in affecting these developments. Illus. A print on demand pub.

We study the effects of a bank's engagement in trading. Traditional banking is relationship-based: not scalable, long-term oriented, with high implicit capital, and low risk (thanks to the law of large numbers). Trading is transactions-based: scalable, shortterm, capital constrained, and with the ability to generate risk from concentrated positions. When a bank engages in trading, it can use its ‘spare’ capital to profitablity expand the scale of trading. However, there are two inefficiencies. A bank may allocate too much capital to trading ex-post, compromising the incentives to build relationships ex-ante. And a bank may use trading for risk-shifting. Financial development augments the scalability of trading, which initially benefits conglomeration, but beyond some point inefficiencies dominate. The deepending of the financial markets in recent decades leads trading in banks to become increasingly risky, so that problems in managing and regulating trading in banks will persist for the foreseeable future. The analysis has implications for capital regulation, subsidiarization, and scope and scale restrictions in banking.

This book presents the main valuation approaches that can be used to value financial institutions. By sketching 1) the different business models of banks (both commercial and investment banks) and insurance companies (life, property and casualty and reinsurance); 2) the structure and peculiarities of financial institutions’ reporting and financial statements; and 3) the main features of regulatory capital frameworks for banking and insurance (ie Basel III, Solvency II), the book addresses why such elements make the valuation of financial institutions different from the valuation of non-financial companies. The book then features the valuation models that can be used to determine the value of banks and insurance companies including the Discounted Cash Flow, Dividend Discount Model, and Residual Income Model (with the appropriate estimation techniques for the cost of capital and cash flow in financial industries). The main techniques to perform the relative valuation of financial institutions are then presented: along the traditional multiples (P/E, P/BV, P/TBV, P/NAV), the multiples based on industry-specific value drivers are discussed (for example, P/Pre Provision Profit, P/Deposits, P/Premiums, P/Number of branches). Further valuation tools such as the “Value Maps” or the “Warranted Equity Method” will be explained and discussed. The closing section of the book will briefly focus on the valuation of specific financial companies/vehicles such as closed-end funds, private equity funds, leasing companies, etc.