Journal of Banking Regulation最新文献

Silvergate Bank began to “wind down operations and voluntarily liquidate” its bank in March 2023. Whereas Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank would be shut down by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the following days, this “crypto-sector bank” was able to satisfy depositor withdrawals and enter into voluntary liquidation. This paper examines how Silvergate Bank managed its balance sheet in a manner that maintained liquidity and its ability to satisfy substantial and unpredictable outflows from depositor withdrawals by its “crypto-firm” clients. Its approach was consistent with the ethos of the Basel III liquidity requirements to which many banks—though not Silvergate Bank—are subject. Yet the Silvergate model went further by recognising the idiosyncratic depositor dynamics of “crypto-firms”. This paper argues that prudential regulation should apply this model to (i) any bank that sources a substantial proportion of its funding from “crypto-firm” clients, irrespective of that bank’s size, and (ii) all deposits related to crypto-asset market participants at all banks.

This paper analyses the Eurozone banks’ short-term market reaction to the introduction of windfall tax in Spain and Italy. Using an event study, I show that stocks react significantly negatively to the windfall tax announcements. The drop was more pronounced for Spanish and Italian banks, which were directly affected by the measure. According to the cash flow hypothesis, an increase in tax burdens/liabilities significantly affects the bank’s cash flows and profitability, leading to a decline in the bank’s market value. High-tax, small, operationally efficient, and profitable banks with high institutional ownership show higher negative abnormal returns to the measure announcement.

When a widespread funding shock hits the banking system, banks may engage in strategic behaviour to deal with funding shortages by a pre-emptive disposal of assets. Alternatively, they may adopt a more cautious strategy to mitigate price reactions, thereby distributing the assets sales into smaller portions over time. We model banks’ optimal behaviour using standard optimisation techniques and show that an equilibrium always exits in a stylised setting. A numerical analysis to approximate the equilibrium supplements the theoretical part. The implementation delivers two liquidity measures for the German banking system: the Systemic Liquidity Buffer and the Systemic Liquidity Shortfall. These measures are more informative about systemic liquidity risk than regulatory liquidity measures, such as the LCR, because they model adverse, nonlinear price dynamics in a more realistic way. Our approach is applied to different stress scenarios.

In an increasingly digitised world, and within the new reality of digital finance, a fully digitised public currency seems to be a natural step. To this end, central banks have been testing the possibility to issue a digital form of the traditional fiat currency (so-called Central Bank Digital Currency-CBDC). As these projects steadily progress, and in some cases, reach the implementation phase, a myriad of questions, from legal to macroeconomic, arise. This paper aims to focus, in particular, on two complementary and co-related aspects involving CBCDs: (i) how can the full digitalisation and centralisation of the transaction ledger be combined with privacy and (ii) to what extent CBDCs affect the allocation of burden and the responsibility over supervision of retail transactions. Eminently, the use of cash ensures a form of default privacy that protects the individual against State and private intrusion. While this privacy has caused concern, due to its criminogenic potential, and has been consequently limited by anti-money laundering (AML) regulations, the remaining cone of shadow cash guarantees is a crucial limit to control. In the context of a shifting financial system, undergoing deep transformation due to increasing datafication and decentralisation of the market, a new governance of financial supervision and record-keeping—up to now based on a unique and centralised ledger—is crucial to redefine the trade-off between financial integrity and privacy. This article will examine the origins and characteristics of CBDCs, to then analyse how the trade-off between control and privacy is set to reshape this new architecture.

Following the financial crises and several scandals, the issue of whistleblowing has re-emerged for the banking and financial sector. These events led the EU to adopt provisions on whistleblowing in several EU legal acts concerning the banking sector such as in the Single Supervisory Mechanism. On October 2019, the EU adopted the Directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law (Directive on the protection of whistle-blowers). The EU decided to offer to the Member States a new enforcement tool, inspired, probably, by the long-existing US model on the use of whistle-blowers as private enforcers. The first part of the article will analyse the relationship between private enforcement and whistleblowing under EU law. In the second part of this article, whistleblowing in the EU banking sector will be scrutinised and it will be argued that the sectoral provisions in the banking sector should be replaced by the Directive to ensure clarity for whistle-blowers.

Abstract

Macroprudential policy is still a relatively new policy area (“more art than science”). Unlike monetary policy, it still does not have any tested and robust strategies to follow. Using a novel strategy index, we explore and critically review macroprudential strategy documents published in 30 countries in 2014–2023. The overall results point to fairly high quality of strategies, with low level of heterogeneity in the total score. Most strategy documents were published by central banks responsible for macroprudential policy. The score for strategies in European Union (EU) countries is higher and more homogenous than in non-EU countries. Elements least frequently included in the strategies include challenges for macroprudential policy (like cyber or climate risks) and its interactions with other policy areas. Macroprudential strategies were mostly issued after the credit boom. The results provide relevant policy implications on future revisions of this kind of document.