Recent evidence suggests that investors struggle to process complex financial disclosures. Relative to equity and public debt investors, banks have unique advantages in acquiring information and can impose contractual terms to mitigate information frictions. We investigate whether financial...

This article investigates the relationship between discretionary loan loss provisions and bank intangibles among African banks. Prior studies examine how intangible assets affect firms' profitability and valuation decisions with almost no focus on the role of loan loss provisions. We investigate...

Regulatory capital guidelines allow for loan loss reserves to be added back as capital. The evidence in this paper suggests that the influence of loan loss reserves added back as regulatory capital (hereafter referred to as “add-backs”) on bank risk cannot be explained by either economic...

We investigate the valuation risk affecting financial instruments classified as L2 and L3 for accounting purposes. These are instruments that are not directly traded in active markets and are often relatively complex, opaque and illiquid. There is a huge volume of L2 and L3 instruments in the...

Held-to-Maturity (HTM) accounting allows banks to avoid using current market prices to value securities on their balance sheet. During 2022, the HTM portfolios of U.S. banks grew from $2 trillion to $2.75 trillion while their overall holdings of securities remained constant at $6 trillion. U.S....

The new lease standard (Accounting Standards Codification [ASC] 842), which is expected to alleviate the reporting issues associated with operating leases, requires formal recognition of related assets and liabilities on the balance sheet. Disregarding the considerable controversy surrounding...

This study, which analysed the profitability of 42 reinsurers in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1991 to 2020, revealed that various factors such as gross domestic product, competition (HHI), premium growth, investment performance, underwriting risk, and operational efficiency affect the profitability...

Our analytical description of how banks' responses to asset price changes can result in procyclical leverage reveals that for banks with a binding regulatory leverage constraint, absent differences in regulatory risk weights across assets, procyclical leverage does not occur. For banks without a...

The German Commercial Code ("HGB") allows banks to build visible reserves for general banking risks according to section 340g HGB. These "GBR reserves" may, in addition to their risk provisioning function, be used to enhance capital endowment, for internal financing, signaling or earnings...

An important question in banking is how strict supervision affects bank lending and in turn local business activity. Forcing banks to recognize losses could choke off lending and amplify local economic woes, especially after financial crises. But stricter supervision could also lead to changes...