Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report and comment on the High Court ruling on recoverability of claimants' losses arising from unauthorised insurance activity. Design/methodology/approach – The paper outlines the facts surrounding the case and comments on the decision. Findings...

We analyze the takeover premiums paid for a sample of European bank mergers 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 and of deposit insurance regimes in Europe has...

We analyze how the structure of executive compensation affects the risk choices made by bank CEOs. For a sample of acquiring U.S. banks, we employ the Merton distance to default model to show that CEOs with higher pay-risk sensitivity engage in risk-inducing mergers. Our findings are driven by...

This paper studies the impact of European bank mergers and acquisitions on changes in key safety and soundness measures of both acquirers and targets. We find that capitalization, profitability, and liquidity show signs of statistically and economically significant mean reversion for acquirers....

We analyze the takeover premiums paid for a sample of European bank mergers 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 as deposit insurance regimes in Europe...

We analyze the implications of European bank consolidation on the default risk of acquiring banks. For a sample of 134 bidding banks, we employ the Merton distance to default model to show that, on average, bank mergers are risk neutral. However, for relatively safe banks, mergers generate a...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the inadequacy of present supervisory arrangements to identify reliable ex-ante indicators of banking distress. For a sample of US bank holding companies, we analyse the extent to which distance to default based on market data can be explained using...

This paper studies the impact of European bank mergers and acquisitions on changes in key safety and soundness measures of both acquirers and targets. We find that capitalization, profi tability and liquidity show signs of statistically and economically significant mean reversion for acquirers....

Using an international sample of large banks between 2000 and 2010, we evaluate the risk sensitivity of minimum capital requirements. Our results show that risk-weighted assets (the regulatory measure of portfolio risk, which determines minimum capital requirements) are ill-calibrated to a...