National measures of competition and macroeconomic activity have been used by researchers in recent years to explain performance and risk differentials across banks. However, such measures may be inappropriate for banks which operate with a regional focus. In this paper we construct measures of...

This paper explores the ability of financial analysts to gauge the risk taken by banks and investigates the impact of the recent financial crisis. Using a sample of 36,343 analyst forecasts issued for 411 European banks over 2003-2009 we find that analyst forecasts are influenced by risk, the...

This paper studies earnings management and forecast guidance activities of European banks between 2004 and 2008. Using 22,564 analyst forecasts for 55 banks we find that the proportion of banks hitting or beating analyst consensus fell from 68.22% pre-crisis to 28.13% during the crisis. Banks...