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Poor bank governance has disastrous consequences for economies as the 2007-2009 financial crisis has shown. In the aftermath, board diversity is identified as an effective mechanism to enhance bank governance. Diversity, creating cognitive conflict between board members, is expected to enhance board's independence of thought to better perform monitoring and advising functions. Age is a key demographic measure and age dissimilarity between the chair and the CEO in non-financial firms leads to better economic outcomes (Goergen et al., 2015). In this paper, we examine whether chair-CEO age dissimilarity can mitigate banks' excessive risk-taking behaviour. Using a unique sample of 100 listed banks in Europe between 2005 and 2014, we find that age difference between the chair and the CEO reduces bank risk-taking. A chair-CEO generational gap -defined as a minimum of 20 years' age difference-has a larger impact in reducing risk-taking.

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This paper investigates household access to consumer credit in the UK using information on 58,642 households between 2001 and 2009. Employing a treatment effects model and propensity score matching, we find that non-white households are less likely to have financing compared to white households. We also find that even if they obtain financing the intensity of borrowing is lower than for white households. Overall, non-white households seem to be in a weaker position to access consumer credit in the UK.JEL classification: D14, J14, G21

We systematically review the recent empirical literature to investigate whether and how securitization influences bank behaviour and its implication on financial stability. We find that, in the years preceding the 2007-2009 financial crisis, banks with higher credit and market risk were more likely to securitize assets. Banks became riskier and increased systemic risk as they took advantage of securitization in order to obtain capital relief. There is robust evidence indicating that mortgage securitization led to a deterioration in bank lending standards via weaker screening, lower denial rates, and misreporting of credit quality. For corporate loan securitization, the empirical findings on lax bank lending are inconclusive. However, it is evident that securitization resulted in poorer ex-post bank monitoring of corporate borrowers. Even though Europe is the second largest securitization market, there is a dearth of evidence on the impact of securitization on European banks' lending behaviour. Research is also very limited on the post-crisis regulatory incentive aligning mechanisms such as the risk retention requirements and the credit ratings reform. Finally, evidence on securitisation activity in emerging markets, such as Latin America and China, where securitization volumes have been increasing recently, is relatively non-existent.