The Effect of Holding Company Affiliation on Bank Risk and the 2008 Financial Crisis

Purpose The organizational form of financial institutions is related to their level of risk, leverage, liquidity and capitalization. High level of risk and leverage and lower levels of liquidity and capitalization are considered to be the root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if banks affiliated to holding company structure contributed more to the root causes of crisis than unaffiliated banks. Design/methodology/approach The paper isolates the effect of holding company association by restricting the sample to one-bank holding companies and individual banks. A comparative analysis of independent and holding company-affiliated banks is performed. Univariate analysis and multivariate regressions are used to compare the risk, leverage, liquidity and capitalization of affiliated and independent banks. Findings The paper finds that holding company affiliation is linked to several root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Specifically, holding company affiliation results in higher levels of home mortgage loans underwritten and underperforming, higher leverage, lower liquidity and lower capitalization for the subsidiary bank. Practical implications The paper demonstrates that affiliated banks use their higher leveraged positions to engage in riskier home mortgage lending, sacrificing both liquidity and capital adequacy. These findings can help policy makers to focus on the group of banks that are part of holding company affiliation and implement such policies and regulations so as to avoid any re-occurrence of financial crisis. Originality/value This paper is the first to link the structural differences in banks to the root causes of financial crisis and to isolate the effect of holding company affiliation through sample selection. The paper will be valued to other researchers who try to isolate the effect of holding company affiliation and those studying the causes of the financial crisis of 2008.

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Do Crises Hit Female-Managed and Male-Managed Firms Differently? Evidence from the 2008 Financial Crisis

10.1596/34458 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Tanima Ahmed ◽

Silvia Muzi ◽

Kohei Ueda

Keyword(s):

Financial Crisis ◽

2008 Financial Crisis ◽

The 2008 Financial Crisis

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Mathematics without Apologies

10.23943/princeton/9780691175836.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Michael Harris

Keyword(s):

Number Theory ◽

Financial Crisis ◽

Pop Culture ◽

First Century ◽

2008 Financial Crisis ◽

Dinner Party ◽

Mathematical Life ◽

Personal Experiences ◽

The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽

Guided Tour

What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers, this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources. Drawing on the author's personal experiences as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyám to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands, the book reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, the book touches on a wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party? The book takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.

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