Custodians play a key but discrete role in the global financial market infrastructure. In Europe, they are licensed as "credit institutions ", a legal requirement for European deposit-taking institutions, and therefore they face the same prudential requirements as "traditional" banks. However,...

Decentralised finance (DeFi) represents an extremely interesting and continuously growing area of the financial sector. The present paper analyses varied types of digital platforms, expression of different degrees of decentralisation/disintermediation, focusing on capital raising ones since...

The M&A transactions represent a wide range of unique business optimization opportunities in the corporate transformation deals, which are usually characterized by the high level of total risk. The M&A transactions can be successfully implemented by taking to an account the size of investments,...

After the collapse of communism, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) implemented economic reforms that were largely inspired by the prevailing neoliberal paradigm. One of the consequences of these reforms was that the region's economies became very open to foreign direct...

This paper examines the effects of competition on bank stability in the United Kingdom between 1994 and 2013. We construct several measures of competition and test the relationship between competition and bank stability. We find that, on average, competition lowers stability, but that its effect...

The percentage of out-of-market loan originations to small businesses, as measured by both amounts and number, have been trending upward over the past two decades. The percentage of out-of-market loan originations to small businesses, as measured by both amounts and number, declined when...

This paper studies how a bank's diversification affects its own risk taking behavior and the risk taking of competing, nondiversified banks. In particular, I test whether greater geographic diversification of banks has effects on the risk taking behavior of nondiversified competitors beyond...

Federal and state laws allow U.S. financial conglomerates to own securities, insurance and depository institutions through a holding company structure. Before the recent crisis, the federal or state agency responsible for regulating a financial conglomerate as a whole was determined by what...

This paper outlines relatively easy to implement reforms for the supervision of transnational banking-groups in the E.U. that should not be primarily based on legal form but on the actual risk structures of the pertinent financial institutions. The proposal also aims at paying close attention to...

The gold spot price is fixed by four banks every day at 10:30 am and 3 pm London time. This document describes a role-play simulation that replicates core features of the London gold fixing with the aim to better understand the incentives and the behaviour of the fixing participants. The game is...