This paper explores the ability of financial analysts to gauge the risk taken by banks and investigates the impact of the recent financial crisis. Using a sample of 36,343 analyst forecasts issued for 411 European banks over 2003-2009 we find that analyst forecasts are influenced by risk, the...

Detecting whether banks' leverage is indeed procyclical is relevant to support the view that booms and crises may be reinforced by some sort of supply side financial accelerator, whilst finding a plausible explanation of banks' behaviour is crucial to trace the road for a sensible reform of...

This paper studies earnings management and forecast guidance activities of European banks between 2004 and 2008. Using 22,564 analyst forecasts for 55 banks we find that the proportion of banks hitting or beating analyst consensus fell from 68.22% pre-crisis to 28.13% during the crisis. Banks...

This paper investigates whether investment in Information Technology (IT) - hardware, software and other IT services - influences the performance of banks. Using a sample of 737 European banks over the period 1995-2000 we analyse whether IT investment is reflected in improved performance...

This paper compares and reconciles two new methods for cross-country comparisons of the cost efficiency of UK and Italian investment firms over the period 1995-1998. It employs four different specifications of the stochastic frontier methodology, using a translog cost function in order to...

This paper investigates whether M&A operations influence the performance of banks. Using a sample of 714 deals involving EU acquirers and targets located throughout the world over the period 1991-2005, we investigate whether M&A operations are associated with improved performance (using both...

During the past decades, competitive pressures have increasingly driven banks to change the strategic focus on generating returns to shareholders. All things being equal, cost efficient banks should be more profitable and therefore generate greater shareholder returns. The purpose of this paper...