How big do banks need to be to gain all the economies of scale? The largest Canadian banks already achieve scale economies and further increases in size can make them "too big to fail." Available evidence indicates normal monopoly risks will be passed on to Canadian firms and consumers if the...

From the mid-19th Century until the Great Depression, banks, insurance companies and other large institutional investors supplied railways with external capital that supported their rise to near hegemony over transport in the U.S. This regime ended in the 1930’s, when widespread rail...

This paper dissects the balance sheet and business model of Gulf Finance, and scrutinizes the existence of a "pre-exit premium" in their activities – on top of the usual exit fees and/or performance fees. The study suggests that this practice (uncommon even for conventional Private Equity...

For well over a decade many observers had warned that the European Union was ill-prepared in case of a financial storm because its market integration far outpaced its policy integration. This situation was well known to policy-makers but it was hoped that financial crises would wait until policy...

The post-crisis and regulatory changes face banks with a new framework, replacing financial performance at the heart of their model. With the exception of risks associated with proprietary financial transactions, effects of the structure of income on the profitability and the stability of...

Islamic and conventional investment funds have the same purpose. However, unlike conventional funds, Islamic funds offer different investment contracts and have to invest in accordance with a set of selection rules. This dissertation focuses on developing theoretical and empirical analysis...

• This paper provides a specific proposal to limit the financial activities that are covered and thus subsidized by the government safety net in order to protect the financial system and the economy. The U.S. safety net, which consists of central bank loans to solvent but liquidity strained...

The financial crisis has revealed fatal institutional and structural deficits at the finance market. Politics has reacted to the financial crisis with a sea of legal bills and regulations. But all regulating efforts are merely system-imminent reparation measures and do not solve the core...

Ever since the financial crisis of the banking system of 2008 - 2010 the paradigm that deposits or other exposures towards major banks are safe has been fundamentally questioned. This put industrial corporates, who to support their business usually need to manage significant cash holdings or...