Enforcement actions (or sanctions) pursue two complementary goals, namely to penalize guilty companies and to provide an example to other companies that bad behaviour will be penalized. Although the recent financial crisis showed that this topic is critical in banking, only a few papers (e.g....

This paper analyzes the causes and consequences of the enforcement actions (sanctions) imposed by supervisory authorities for banks. Focusing on a sample of Italian banks between 2005 and 2012, we found 302 sanctions regarding 3,588 persons (i.e. Board of directors, Top Managers, and Chief...