International audienceThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between bank risk and product diversification in the changing structure of the European banking industry. Based on a broad set of European banks for the period 1996-2002, our study first shows that banks expanding into non-interest income activities present higher risk and higher insolvency risk than banks which mainly supply loans. However, considering size effects and splitting non-interest activities into both trading activities and commission and fee activities we show that the positive link with risk is mostly accurate for small banks and essentially driven by commission and fee activities. A higher share of trading activities is never associated with higher risk and for small banks it implies, in some cases, lower asset and default risks

International audienceUsing detailed ownership data for a sample of European commercial banks, we analyze the link between ownership structure and risk in both privately owned and publicly held banks. We consider five categories of shareholders that are specific to our dataset. We find that ownership structure is significant in explaining risk differences but mainly for privately owned banks. A higher equity stake of either individuals/families or banking institutions is associated with a decrease in asset risk and default risk. In addition, institutional investors and non-financial companies impose the riskiest strategies when they hold higher stakes. For publicly held banks, changes in ownership structure do not affect risk taking. Market forces seem to align the risk-taking behavior of publicly held banks, such that ownership structure is no longer a determinant in explaining risk differences. However, higher stakes of banking institutions in publicly held banks are associated with lower credit and default risk

International audienceOur study of 602 European banks over 1996-2002 investigates how the banks' expansion into fee-based services has affected their interest margins and loan pricing. We find that higher income share from commissions and fees is associated with lower margins and loan spreads. The higher the commission and fee income share, moreover, the weaker the link between bank loan spreads and loan risk. The latter result is consistent with the conjecture that banks price (or misprice) loans to increase sales of other services. That loss leader (or cross selling) hypothesis has implications for bank regulation and competition with (non-bank) lenders

A panel of 186 European banks is used for the period 1992-2004 to determine if banking behaviors, induced by the capital adequacy constraint and the provisioning system, amplify credit fluctuations. We find that poorly capitalized banks are constrained to expand credit. We also find that loan loss provisions (LLP) made in order to cover expected future loan losses (non-discretionary LLP) amplify credit fluctuations. By contrast, LLP used for management objectives (discretionary LLP) do not affect credit fluctuations. The findings of our research are consistent with the call for the implementation of a dynamic provisioning system in Europe.

We empirically examine whether the way a bank might use loan loss provisions to smooth its income is in ‡uenced by its ownership concentration and the regulatory environment. Using a panel of European commercial banks, we …nd evidence that banks with more concentrated ownership use discretionary loan loss provisions to smooth their income. This behavior is less pronounced in countries with stronger supervisory regimes or higher external audit quality. Banks with low levels of ownership concentration do not display such discretionary income smoothing behavior. This suggests the need to improve existing or implement new corporate governance mechanisms.JEL classi…cation: G21; G28