Emerging banking systems / P. Bongini, S. Chiarlone, and G. Ferri -- China / S. Chiarlone and G. Ferri -- India / S. Chiarlone and S. Ghosh -- Indonesia / P. Bongini -- Brazil / M. Lossani, L. Ruggerone and M. Zaninelli -- North Africa / A. Cicogna -- Russia / A. Marra -- Turkey / A. Cimenoglu, M. Ferrazzi and D. Revoltella
The current international financial crisis, which started in 2007 in the US and soon spread to the rest of the world, has revealed that the failure of an interconnected and complex financial institution, even though not necessarily large in terms of total assets, can threaten the stability of the entire financial system and have serious negative consequences for the real economy. In this study, we survey the analytical framework for identifying systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) and discuss the various regulatory proposals that have been put forward at the national and global level to deal with SIFIs.
Politics and regulatory capture can play an important role in financial institutions distress. East Asia's financial crisis featured many distressed and closed financial intermediaries in an environment with many links between government, politicians, supervisors, and financial institutions. This makes the East Asian financial crisis a good event for studying how such connections affect the resolution of financial institutions distress. The authors investigate distress and closure decisions for 186 banks and 97 non-bank financial institutions in Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. They find that after July 1997, 42 percent of the institutions experienced distress (were closed, merged, or re-capitalized, or had their operations temporarily suspended). By July 1999, 13 percent of all institutions in existence in July 1997 had been closed. Using financial data for 1996, the authors find that: 1) Traditional CAMEL-type variables - returns on assets, loan growth, and the ratio of loan loss reserves to capital, of net interest income to total income, and of loans to borrowings - help predict subsequent distress and closure. 2) None of the foreign-controlled institutions were closed, and foreign portfolio ownership lowered an institutions probability of distress. 3) Connections - with industrial groups of influential families - increased the probability of distress, suggesting that supervisors had granted forbearance from regulations. Connections also made closure more, not less, likely - suggesting that the closure processes themselves were transparent. 4) But larger institutions, although more likely to be distressed, were less likely to be closed, while (smaller) non-bank financial institutions were more likely to be closed. This suggests a too big to fail policy. 5) These policies, together with the fact that resolution processes were late and not necessarily comprehensive, may have added to the overall uncertainty and loss of confidence in the East Asian countries, aggravating the financial crisis.
Consolidation in the banking industry has caused concern about the survival of small banks. Empirical evidence, however, shows that small banks are performing better than larger banks in terms of loan growth and profitability. This paper investigates the determinants of such unexpected superior performance; in particular we posit that peculiarities of small banks, like their ability to lever on relationship lending, are good explanatory variables of their recent loan growth.