Bank payouts divert cash to shareholders, while leaving behind riskier and less liquid assets to repay debt holders in the future. Bank payouts, therefore, constitute a type of risk-shifting that benefits equity holders at the expense of debt holders. In this paper, we provide insights on how...

The paper describes selling and underwriting procedures in rights issues and open offers, and analyzes the costs of issue reported in prospectuses, including the substantial costs which are not for underwriting. The impression is often given that costs are fixed at 2% of gross proceeds, but they...

The paper compares beta estimates obtained from OLS regression with estimates corrected for heteroscedasticity of the error term using ARCH models, for 145 UK shares. The differences are mainly less than 0.10, for betas calculated using daily returns, but even such small differences can matter...

The financial crisis that erupted in 2007 has brought the issues of the size, risk, and regulation of banks to the attention of a wide audience. It is difficult to open a broadsheet newspaper or a business magazine without being confronted with some aspect of bank behaviour, be it their risk...

Insurance securitization has long been hailed as an important tool to increase the underwriting capacity for companies exposed to catastrophe-related risks. However, global volumes of insurance securitization have remained surprisingly low to date which raises questions over its benefits. In...

We analyze the takeover premiums paid for a sample of domestic and cross-border bank takeovers in the European Union between 1997 and 2007. We find that acquiring banks value profitable, high-growth and low risk targets. We also find that the strength of bank regulation and supervision as well...

The contributors – top international scholars from finance, law and business – explore the role of governance, both internal and external, in explaining risk-taking and other aspects of the behavior of financial institutions. Additionally, they discuss market and policy features...

Catastrophe (Cat) bonds are insurance securitization vehicles which are supposed to transfer catastrophe-related underwriting risk from issuers to capital markets. This paper addresses key, unanswered questions concerning Cat bonds and offers the following results. First, our findings show firms...