Stavros Peristiani

Do Mergers Improve the X-Efficiency and Scale Efficiency of U.S. Banks? Evidence from the 1980s

A central issue currently debated among bank analysts and economists is whether mergers enhance the efficiency of surviving banks. This paper investigates the postmerger performance of acquiring banks that participated in a merger during the period 1980-90. The evidence suggests that acquirers failed to improve X-efficiency after the merger. Acquiring banks, however, experienced moderate gains in scale efficiency relative to a control sample. The second part of the paper uses regression analysis to identify factors influencing the performance of merging banks. The regression results suggest that improvements in postmerger performance depend on the ability of the bank to strengthen asset quality. The author finds no evidence to support the theory that in-market mergers lead to significant improvements in efficiency. Copyright 1997 by Ohio State University Press.

Financial Visibility and the Decision to Go Private

A large fraction of the companies that went private between 1990 and 2007 were fairly young public firms, often with the same management team making the crucial restructuring decisions at both the time of the initial public offering (IPO) and the buyout. This article investigates the determinants of the decision to go private over a firms entire public life cycle. Our evidence reveals that firms with declining growth in analyst coverage, falling institutional ownership, and low stock turnover were more likely to go private and opted to do so sooner. We argue that a primary reason behind the decision of IPO firms to abandon their public listing was a failure to attract a critical mass of financial visibility and investor interest. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org., Oxford University Press.

The Role of Bank Advisors in Mergers and Acquisitions

This paper looks at the role of commercial banks and investment banks as financial advisors. In their role as lenders and advisors, banks can be viewed as serving a certification function. However, banks acting as both lenders and advisors face a potential conflict of interest that may mitigate or offset any certification effect. Overall, we find evidence of a net certification effect for target firms but conflicts of interest for acquirers. In particular, target firms earn higher abnormal returns when the targets own bank is hired as merger advisor, consistent with the banks role as certifier of the (more informationally opaque) targets value to the acquirer. In contrast, we find no net certification role for acquirers. There are at least two possible reasons for this. First, certification of value may be less important for acquirers because it is the target firm that must be priced in a merger. Second, acquirers may utilize commercial bank advisors in order to obtain access to bank loans to finance activities in the postmerger period. Thus, an acquirer may choose its own bank (with whom it has had a prior lending relationship) as an advisor in a merger. However, this choice weakens the certification effect and creates a potential conflict of interest because the advisors merger advice may be distorted by considerations related to the banks past and future lending activity.

Margin Requirements, Speculative Trading, and Stock Price Fluctuations: The Case of Japan

An increase in margin requirements in the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange is followed by a decline in margin borrowing, trading volume, the proportion of trading performed through margin accounts, the growth in stock prices, and the conditional volatility of daily returns. The nonmarginable Second Section stocks show a smaller change in volatility and only a delayed weak price response. The hypothesis that margin requirements restrict the behavior of destabilizing speculators can explain these correlations but cannot explain the observation that individuals, the most active users of margin funds, appear to be good market timers.

The Information Value of the Stress Test and Bank Opacity

We investigate whether the “stress test,” the extraordinary examination of the nineteen largest U.S. bank holding companies conducted by federal bank supervisors in 2009, produced the information demanded by the market. Using standard event study techniques, we find that the market had largely deciphered on its own which banks would have capital gaps before the stress test results were revealed, but that the market was informed by the size of the gap; given our proxy for the expected gap, banks with larger capital gaps experienced more negative abnormal returns. Our findings suggest that the stress test helped quell the financial panic by producing vital information about banks. Our findings also contribute to the academic literature on bank opacity and the value of government monitoring of banks.

The behavior of consumer loan rates during the 1990 credit slowdown

Abstract This study re-examines the 1990 credit slowdown by investigating the loan pricing behavior of commercial banks. We find strong evidence that large, undercapitalized banks contributed to the credit slowdown by charging consumers a higher-than-average loan rate relative to better-capitalized institutions. This disparity in lending exists even after accounting for bank funding costs. Thus, we argue that there was a lending slowdown that occurred among large, undercapitalized banks. The reluctance to lend among undercapitalized banks is at least suggestive of behavior that is consistent with a credit crunch.

Implied Mortgage Refinancing Thresholds

The optimal prepayment model asserts that rational homeowners would refinance if they can reduce the current value of their liabilities by an amount greater than the refinancing threshold, defined as the cost of carrying the transaction plus the time value of the embedded call option. To compute the notional value of the refinancing threshold, researchs have traditionally relied on a discrete option-pricing model. Using a unique loan level dataset that links homeowner attributes with property and loan characteristics, this study proposes an alternative approach of estimating the implied value of the refinancing threshold. This empirical method enables us to measure the minimum interest rate differential needed to justify refinancing conditional on the borrowers creditworthiness, remaining maturity, and other observable characteristics.

The Model Structure of Discount Window Borrowing

This article investigates the specification of discount window borrowing. The author establishes empirically that the borrowing function is heteroskedastic and nonlinear. Subsequently, he proceeds to propose a simple theoretical framework that generates endogenously these anomalies. In particular, the author demonstrates that such phenomena are precipitated by the response of depository institutions to discount credit rationing and Federal Reserve collateral limitations. Copyright 1991 by Ohio State University Press.

Prestigious stock exchanges: A network analysis of international financial centers

In this paper, we use methods from social network analysis to assess the relative importance of financial centers around the world. Using data from virtually the entire universe of global equity activity, we present complete rankings for 45 separate locations for the period 1990–2006. Our analysis constructs a network measure of prestige based on their ability to attract global IPOs. U.S. exchanges are effectively the unique hosts for cross-border equity activity from many other locations. Moreover, they are the destination of choice for most companies coming from locations with highly prestigious exchanges. We also document the emergence of several competing stock exchanges from developed and emerging market economies. The ascent of these stock markets, however, might reflect improved conditions in a growing global market rather than a decline in the competitiveness of U.S. exchanges.

What Was Behind the M2 Breakdown

A deterioration in the link between the M2 monetary aggregate and GDP, along with large errors in predicting M2 growth, led the Board of Governors to downgrade the M2 aggregate as a reliable indicator of monetary policy in 1993. In this paper, we argue that the financial condition of depository institutions was a major factor behind the unusual pattern of M2 growth in the early 1990s. By constructing alternative measures of M2 based on banks’ and thrifts’ capital positions, we show that the anomalous behavior of M2 in the early 1990s disappears. Specifically, after accounting for the effect of capital constrained institutions on M2 growth, we are able to explain the unusual behavior of M2 velocity during this time period, obtain superior M2 forecasting results, and produce a more stable relationship between M2 and the ultimate goals of policy. Our work suggests that M2 may contain useful information about economic growth during periods of time when there are no major disturbances to depository institutions