How do regulators design bank capital requirements when banks can misreport the value of their assets? We show that the answer depends critically on the existence of secondary markets for bank assets. Without secondary markets, capital requirements based on banks' reporting are more socially...

We study large, long-term private equity investments in 87 publicly traded commercial banks made possible by a loosening of Federal Reserve regulations in 2008. Bank shareholders earned premiums upon the announcement of the PE investments, positive abnormal returns persisted throughout the...