-oriented regime for merger control increases banks' stock prices, whereas it decreases those of non-financial firms. Moreover, bank … merger targets become more profitable and larger. A major determinant of the positive bank returns, after controlling inter … alia for the general quality of institutions and individual bank characteristics, is the opaqueness that characterizes the …

deposits towards non-deposit liabilities. We find that unobserved timeinvariant bank fixed effects are ultimately the most … important determinant of banks' capital structures and that banks' leverage converges to bank specific, time invariant targets …. -- Bank capital ; capital regulation ; capital structure ; leverage …