Laetitia Lepetit

We examine whether cross-country differences in green transparency policies (GTP) shift global banks’ exposure to carbon-intensive (“brown”) firms across borders. Combining a country-year index of GTP stringency with data on the affiliates of 703 banks in 117 host countries over 2010–2023, we find that banks increase the foreign relative to domestic share of brown affiliates when home-country requirements tighten relative to host-country rules, consistent with regulatory arbitrage. A push–pull decomposition attributes this reallocation to tighter home regulation rather than weaker host regimes. The response appears in both majority- and minority-owned affiliates. Neither stronger home-country legal institutions nor banks' environmental scores significantly mitigate it, though a stronger domestic presence of environmental NGOs dampens the minority-owned response without eliminating it. Divergent transparency regimes therefore relocate rather than reduce brown exposure, shifting transition risk toward jurisdictions where it is least visible to supervisors and markets, and strengthening the case for internationally coordinated disclosure standards.

Suite aux réformes de Bâle III sur la réglementation bancaire, nous analysons empiriquement l ' impact d ' un ratio de levier couplé à un ratio de capital pondéré du risque sur l ' offre de crédit et la prise de risque des banques. Avec une base de données sur 66 pays couvrant la période 2000-2014, nous trouvons que les banques octroient moins de crédit et optent pour davantage de risque dans les pays où un ratio de levier est appliqué, indépendamment du degré d ' implication des superviseurs nationaux. De plus, un meilleur contrôle des fonds propres ne compense pas ces effets négatifs du ratio de levier.

Using a panel of European banks with a controlling shareholder over the period 2003-2017, we examine whether the presence of directors related to minority shareholders on the board has an impact on bank risk. We find that the inclusion of minority shareholder related directors results in lower risk. Our results depend crucially on whether or not such directors have financial expertise and a decisive position on the board, while the observed decrease in risk does not depend on their political connections. To identify the relationship, we use a dynamic generalized method of moments approach to estimation.

We derive a Z-score measure reflecting downside bank insolvency risk, drawing on a Chebyshev inequality in terms of the lower semivariance. As then illustrated empirically for US banks, this may provide a useful alternative, or robustness check, to the more commonly used Z-score measure based on the standard Chebyshev inequality.

Using a panel of controlled European banks, we examine whether board structures that include directors that are related to minority shareholders can be an effective corporate governance mechanism to limit expropriation by controlling shareholders, without exacerbating risk. We find that the inclusion of such minority directors does indeed increase the effectiveness of bank boards, as it results in higher market valuations whereas the presence of independent directors does not, without increasing risk. Our results depend crucially on whether or not minority directors are related to "active" institutional investors, the extent of holdings of related shareholders, as well as the strength of the supervisory regime. To identify the relationship, we use as instrumental variable for the presence of minority directors the distance of minority shareholders from the headquarters of the bank.

We highlight caveats arising in the application of traditional ROA-based Z-scores for the measurement of bank insolvency risk, develop alternative Z-score measures to resolve these issues , and make recommendations for best practice for the US/Europe based on the experience of the …nancial crisis of 2007-2008. Using a probabilistic approach (i) our novel regulatory capital Z-score dominates traditional Z-score measures for both US/Europe; (ii) Z-scores computed with exponentially weighted moments dominate those with moving moments for the US sample, but not for Europe. For both US/Europe, using a multivariate logit approach (i) allows computation of augmented Z-scores that provide probabilities of distress that better discriminate between distressed/surviving banks than the probabilistic approach; (ii) suggests that the ROA-based Z-score using current values of the capital-asset ratio is best, calculated either with moving or exponentially weighted moments.