During the period 2011-12 of economic downturn characterized typically by economy wide loan defaults many banks in India are reported to have posted adequate levels of capital but experienced difficulties due to unsound liquidity management. In an attempt to examine the ease of liquidity management procedure of the Indian banking industry, this paper critically examines whether the central bank of the country facilitates liquidity management of the banks during the stress periods. The finding is that it does not.
We study the capacity of the banking system to provide liquidity to the corporate sector in times of stress and how changes in this capacity affect corporate liquidity management. We show that the contractual arrangements among banks in loan syndicates co-insure liquidity risks of credit line drawdowns and generate a network of interbank exposures. We develop a simple model and simulate the liquidity and insurance capacity of the banking network. We find that the liquidity capacity of large banks has significantly increased following the introduction of liquidity regulation, and that the liquidity co-insurance function in loan syndicates is economically important. We also find that borrowers with higher reliance on credit lines in their liquidity management have become more likely to obtain credit lines from syndicates with higher liquidity. The assortative matching on liquidity characteristics has strengthened the role of banks as liquidity providers to the corporate sector.
Nonlinear target adjustment in corporate liquidity management: an endogenous thresholds approach
