This paper argues that U.S. bank regulator efforts to restrain leveraged lending are misguided. Leveraged loans are a critical source of external financing for companies in need of cash to invest, innovate, and grow. I review a sizable body of academic evidence that shows that, of the myriad...

European corporate law and corporate governance are moving ahead beyond expectation. Some British voices called this “a renaissance in the past decade”. In December 2012, the European Commission came forward with an Action Plan that combines both corporate law and corporate governance rules...

The financial crisis was a systemic run. Hence, the central regulatory response should be to eliminate run-prone securities from the financial system. By contrast, current regulation guarantees run-prone bank liabilities and instead tries to regulate bank assets and their values. I survey how a...

Although liquidity creation is a key banking function, little is known about its determinants. We use a new identification strategy to assess whether an intensification of competition among banks increases or decreases liquidity creation. Consistent with the predictions of some theoretical...

In this paper, I analyse the rise of mandatory structure of bankers' pay in Europe as outcome of criticism of pre-crisis remuneration practices at financial institutions. Whether flawed bankers' pay contributed to the financial crisis is still debated amongst scholars. It appears more likely...

The aim of this study is to explore the previously unresearched outcomes of firms funded through equity crowdfunding, a novel type of entrepreneurial finance. We study the outcomes of a sample of 337 firms funded on equity crowdfunding platforms in Europe between 2009 and 2014. By incorporating...

In this paper, we provide an overview of the concerns surrounding the variations in the calculation of risk-weighted assets (RWAs) across banks and jurisdictions and how this might undermine the Basel III capital adequacy framework. We discuss the key drivers behind the differences in these...

We find that in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis banks replenished only 12% of crisis-related losses through SEOs in 2009 and 2010. However, SEOs are disproportionately conducted by Capital Purchase Program (CPP) recipients, and this is not explained by CPP recipients' economic and...

We develop a theory of optimal bank leverage in which the benefit of debt in inducing loan monitoring is balanced against the benefit of equity in attenuating risk-shifting. However, faced with socially-costly correlated bank failures, regulators bail out creditors. Anticipation of this...