Finanziamento di Ateneo per la ricerca

Conventional wisdom leads to assert that good governance may underpin bank performance while, conversely bad governance destroys its stability/soundness. Moreover, strong externalities on the economy make bank corporate governance a fundamental issue. The European Commission pursued a number of initiatives to create a safer and sounder financial sector for the single market and to restore confidence in banks. This set of rules is intended to build a single rulebook for financial intermediaries in the EU28. It includes prudential requirements for banks (Capital Requirements Directive/Regulation), a better protection for depositors, and regulates the prevention and management of bank failures (Directive on Bank Recovery and Resolution). In particular, the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD 4) encloses stricter rules on capital adequacy, as well as new corporate governance and remuneration rules. Bank board characteristics are a crucial factor of bank risk-taking (Rachdi et al., 2013), thus the qualitative and quantitative composition of corporate governance imposed by the new regulatory framework is meant to influence bank risk-taking. This is a call for a further exploration of the corporate governance composition of European banks after the introduction of the new single rulebook, in order to fully understand how it fills the pre-crisis regulatory gaps. Both a qualitative and quantitative approach will be adopted. A first part of the research will consist in conducting a comprehensive literature review and a comparison of the differences between EU and US financial systems. The quantitative approach will include descriptive statistics and an econometric model with the double purpose of identifying the best practices in bank corporate governance and assessing whether the latter have already been recognized as crucial by the new regulatory framework.