By Thomas Conlon (University College Dublin), John Cotter (University College Dublin; UCLA Anderson School of Management); Philip Molyneux (University of Sharjah – College of Business Administration)
Prudential regulation requires banks to hold capital as a buffer in the event of losses and as a means to mitigate risk shifting by shareholders. Under capital regulation, a large menu of securities is permitted to contribute to regulatory capital. While previous studies have predominantly concentrated on the relationship between bank risks and narrow capital measures (such as tier 1 capital or equity capital), we further develop this work by looking at a broader menu of capital components. We examine bank insolvency risk (distance to default) for listed North American and European banks over the period from 2002 to 2014, with a focus on sensitivity to capital other than common equity. Decomposing tier 1 capital into equity and non-core components reveals a heretofore unidentified variation in risk reduction capacity. Greater non-core tier 1 capital is associated with increased insolvency risk for larger and more diversified banks, impairing the risk reducing capacity of aggregate tier 1 capital. Overall, tier 2 capital is not linked with insolvency risk, although a conflicting relationship is isolated conditional on the level of total regulatory capital held. Finally, the association between risk and capital is weakened when the latter is defined relative to risk-weighted assets.
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