Cross-border Banking in Europe


Book Description

This report argues that policy reforms in micro- and macro-prudential regulation and macroeconomic policies are needed for Europe to reap the important diversification and efficiency benefits from cross-border banking, while reducing the risks stemming from large cross-border banks.Available online as pdf at: http: //www.cepr.org/pubs/books/CEPR/cross-border_banking.pd




Cross-border Banking


Book Description

Cross-border banking, while having the potential for a more efficient financial sector, also creates potential challenges for bank supervisors and regulators. This volume discusses topics that include: the landscape of cross-border bank activity, the resulting competitive implications, emerging challenges for prudential regulation, and more. Cross-border banking, while having the potential for a more efficient financial sector, also creates potential challenges for bank supervisors and regulators. It requires cooperation by regulatory authorities across jurisdictions and a clear delineation of authority and responsibility. That delineation is typically not present and regulatory authorities often have significantly different incentives to respond when cross-border-active banks encounter difficulties. Most of these issues have only begun to be seriously evaluated. This volume, one of the first attempts to address these issues, brings together experts and regulators from different countries. The wide range of topics discussed include: the current landscape of cross-border bank activity, the resulting competitive implications, emerging challenges for prudential regulation, safety net concerns, failure resolution issues, and the potential future evolution of international banking.







The Resolution of Cross-border Banking Crises in the European Union


Book Description

Any policy aimed at resolution of a banking crisis determines which constituents - depositors, creditors, shareholders, the banking industry, and society as a whole - eventually bear the costs associated with a banking crisis, thus giving rise to legitimacy and accountability concerns. Rather than what the recent financial crisis has engendered - mostly ad hoc reactions that socialize losses but not profits - what is required, this incisive analysis shows, is an equitable and viable resolution framework, based on burden sharing, enshrined in law, and designed to deal with bank failures in a way that balances private and public interests. The author explores the design, institutional framework, and practical functioning of such a legal regime under EU law. In the process she discusses such issues as the following: the systemic risk of bank failure; exit regimes for failing banks and banking groups; difficulties produced by the increasing cross-border activities and interconnectedness of the banking sector; resolution tools to minimize the losses of the official sector; the role of various authorities in resolving failing banks; the need for resolution authorities to have robust rules and a certain level of discretion; the potential sources of resolution financing; overcoming resistance to burden-sharing arrangements; the integration potential and political drawbacks of the emerging Banking Union; the deposit insurance responsibilities of Member States; European Central Bank monetary policy operations as a burden-sharing mechanism; and the geographic scope of resolution and burden-sharing regimes and implications for non-participating Member States and third countries.




From Fragmentation to Financial Integration in Europe


Book Description

From Fragmentation to Financial Integration in Europe is a comprehensive study of the European Union financial system. It provides an overview of the issues central to securing a safer financial system for the European Union and looks at the responses to the global financial crisis, both at the macro level—the pendulum of financial integration and fragmentation—and at the micro level—the institutional reforms that are taking place to address the crisis. The emerging financial sector management infrastructure, including the proposed Single Supervisory Mechanism and other elements of a banking union for the euro area, are also discussed in detail.




Changes in Prudential Policy Instruments — A New Cross-Country Database


Book Description

This paper documents the features of a new database that focuses on changes in the intensity in the usage of several widely used prudential tools, taking into account both macro-prudential and micro-prudential objectives. The database coverage is broad, spanning 64 countries, and with quarterly data for the period 2000Q1 through 2014Q4. The five types of prudential instruments in the database are: capital buffers, interbank exposure limits, concentration limits, loan to value (LTV) ratio limits, and reserve requirements. A total of nine prudential tools are constructed since some useful further decompositions are presented, with capital buffers divided into four subindices: general capital requirements, real state credit specific capital buffers, consumer credit specific capital buffers, and other specific capital buffers; and with reserve requirements divided into two sub-indices: domestic currency capital requirements and foreign currency capital requirements. While general capital requirements have the most changes from the cross-country perspective, LTV ratio limits and reserve requirements have the largest number of tightening and loosening episodes. We also analyze the instruments’ usage in relation to the evolution of key variables such as credit, policy rates, and house prices, finding substantial differences in the patterns of loosening or tightening of instruments in relation to business and financial cycles.




European Cross-Border Banking and Banking Supervision


Book Description

This new work provides timely analysis of the cross-border exercise of banking activity in the EU and its supervision, from the perspective of the 'home-host rule'. It examines the current system and the efficacy of recent reforms considering whether the centralisation of decision making and a more effective mutualisation of financing tools could increase the efficiency of the EU banking system and reduce the asymmetry of information between home and host authorities.0This book analyses how far recent reforms under the banking union regime have addressed these issues to ensure the integrity and stability of the European integration project. It utilises data to illustrate the cross border exposures between member states and how they influence home and host decision making. But it equally explores those areas that still remain within the national discretion such as non-performing loans, insolvency-liquidation of banks and deposit protection arrangements, to0mention a few.0The book analyses the main pillars of the banking union: the single supervisory mechanism (SSM); and the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) and the proposed European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS); and the related tools designed to provide crisis management under the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). As such the work considers the impact of the Single Rulebook. In considering these pieces of regulation and mechanisms the book analyses how international standards and EU requirements undertake to divide responsibilities between the home and host state and the extent to which they align interests between the home and host and minimise potential conflicts of interests. In this analysis examples from a set of EU cross-border banks are used to illustrate the workings of home and host relationship between Member States and Third Countries, and the benefits of participating in centralisation of decision making and mutualisation of financing in resolution and depositor protection.0.




Law and Governance of EU Cross-border Bank Groups After the Great Financial Crisis


Book Description

The monograph explores the new crisis prevention and risk management regime for EU cross-border bank groups established after the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). The absence of a such a framework over the course of GFC resulted in renationalisation and fragmentation in the internal banking market. Though the new EU resolution law now regulates cross-border bank groups specifically, it does not explicitly lay down their organisational law. The thesis reconstructs the principles of cross-border bank group governance drawing on common legal traditions of EU Member States, corporate group theory and European Commission's state aid control of bailouts to cross-border bank groups during the crisis. The scope of the EU cross-border bank group is shown to be determined through the transnational interplay between prudential regulation, crisis prevention measures and internal risk management procedures provided for in EU resolution law. The bespoke cross-border governance regime for EU bank groups is analysed through the building blocks of inter-institutional cooperation, group de-partitioning, corporate governance innovations and specific regulatory objectives. Group governance entails a mechanism for balancing the enabling and the protective elements, i.e. legal strategies which either enable a group-wide perspective or protect local markets and entities. The monograph concludes with considerations of the possible implications of such a bespoke law of EU cross-border bank groups and their function of providing critical functions across borders.




Global Banks and International Shock Transmission


Book Description

Global banks played a significant role in transmitting the 2007-09 financial crisis to emerging-market (EM) economies. The authors examine adverse liquidity shocks on main developed-country banking systems and their relationships to EM across Europe, Asia, and Latin Amer., isolating loan supply from loan demand effects. Loan supply in EM across Europe, Asia, and Latin Amer. was affected significantly through three separate channels: (1) a contraction in direct, cross-border lending by foreign banks; (2) a contraction in local lending by foreign banks¿ affiliates in EM; and (3) a contraction in loan supply by domestic banks, resulting from the funding shock to their balance sheets induced by the decline in interbank, cross-border lending. Charts and tables.




Research Handbook on Cross-Border Bank Resolution


Book Description

Since 2008, many countries across the globe have witnessed the introduction of new recovery and resolution regimes for banks. Whereas much may have been achieved on regional levels, this has not been perfect, and many global challenges remain unsolved. The Research Handbook on Cross-Border Bank Resolution analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the current regulatory framework for cross-border bank crises with contributions from eminent experts from the US, EU, Japan and China. The topic is addressed from both economic, and legal perspectives, with a special section devoted to real-life cases.