Using detailed ownership data for a sample of European commercial banks, we analyze the link between ownership structure and risk in both privately owned and publicly held banks. We consider five categories of shareholders (managers/directors, institutional investors, non-financial companies,...

Using detailed ownership data for a sample of European commercial banks, we analyze the link between ownership structure and risk in both privately owned and publicly held banks. We consider five categories of shareholders that are specific to our dataset. We find that ownership structure is...

A dynamic provisioning system is one of the instruments that regulators could use for introducing counter-cyclicality into prudential regulation. The potential effectiveness of such instrument depends on how far actual backward-looking provisioning practices exacerbate growth in bank lending. We...