Banking regulation and disclosure in M&A : an application of the event study methodology

Regulation is indispensable for the functioning of financial markets. After a decade of deregulation, financial regulation has come back into the focus of political discussion. This work reviews the effectiveness of existing and need for new regulation in two exemplary empirical studies. The first part shows that the introduction of bank bankruptcy regulation to deal with banks in financial distress in Germany and the UK has, at best, been marginally effective. It mainly affects credit holders through the withdrawal of implicit bail-out guarantees, with no effect on equity holders. The second part studies information disclosure in the case of M&A. It is shown that the disclosure of additional information at announcement, in this case synergy estimates, is highly relevant for investors. In spite of this fact regulation is discouraged, as the optimal amount of information is best determined by capital markets through managers diligently weighing the costs and benefits of disclosure.