The following post comes to us from Deniz Anginer of the Department of Finance at Virginal Tech, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Director of Research at the World Bank; Harry Huizinga, Professor of Economics at Tilburg University; and Kebin Ma of the World Bank.
In our paper, How Does Corporate Governance Affect Bank Capitalization Strategies?, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine how corporate governance and executive compensation affect bank capitalization strategies for an international sample of banks over the 2003-2011 period.
We find that ‘good’ corporate governance—or corporate governance that causes the bank to act in the interests of bank shareholders—engenders lower levels of bank capital. Specifically, we find that bank boards of intermediate size (big enough to escape capture by management, but small enough to avoid free rider problems within the board), separation of the CEO and chairman of the board roles, and an absence of anti-takeover provisions lead to lower capitalization rates. ‘Good’ corporate governance thus may be bad for bank stability and potentially entail high social costs. This disadvantage of ‘good’ corporate governance has be balanced with presumed benefits in terms of restricting management’s ability to perform less badly in other areas—for instance, by shirking or acquiring perks—at the expense of bank shareholders.