Over the past years, several countries around the world have adopted a system of prudential prompt corrective action (PCA). The European Union countries are being encouraged to adopt PCA by policy analysts who explicitly call for its adoption. To date, most of the discussion on PCA has focused...

This paper studies the impact of European bank mergers and acquisitions on changes in key safety and soundness measures of both acquirers and targets. We find that capitalization, profi tability and liquidity show signs of statistically and economically significant mean reversion for acquirers....

We analyze the takeover premiums paid for a sample of European bank mergers between 1997 and 2007. We find that acquiring banks value profitable, high-growth and low risk targets. We also find that the strength of bank regulation and supervision as well as deposit insurance regimes in Europe...