Reputation and liquidity in Italian listed banks: first applications

The connection between a financial institution and its clients can be studied using the network analysis instrument. In this paper, in particular, we want to investigate if a bank’s liquidity (interpreted in terms of cash holdings) is determined by its reputational level. The main purpose of the research is to add to the existing literature a new Index of General Reputation (IGR), that conveys the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative methods used to assess the corporate reputation. The methodology is based on a data collection from the investor relation section of Italian listed banks websites’ and on a combined use of the manual content analysis and of the network analysis as a score rating system, in order to analyze the information. This is a first investigative study. In the future, we will extend the research to other Countries, in order to undertake a comparative analysis. Furthermore, the concept of liquidity will be expanded and other liquid items of the bank’s financial statements will be included in the investigation.