IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/cfswop/285369.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Know your customer: Informed trading by banks

Author

Listed:
  • Haselmann, Rainer
  • Leuz, Christian
  • Schreiber, Sebastian

Abstract

This study analyzes information production and trading behavior of banks with lending relationships. We combine trade-by-trade supervisory data and credit-registry data to examine banks' proprietary trading in borrower stocks around a large number of corporate events. We find that relationship banks build up positive (negative) trading positions in the two weeks before events with positive (negative) news, even when these events are unscheduled, and unwind positions shortly after the event. This trading pattern is more pronounced in situations when banks are likely to possess private information about their borrowers, and cannot be explained by specialized expertise in certain industries or certain firms. The results suggest that banks' lending relationships inform their trading and underscore the potential for conflicts of interest in universal banking, which have been a prominent concern in the regulatory debate for a long time. Our analysis illustrates how combining large data sets can uncover unusual trading patterns and enhance the supervision of financial institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Haselmann, Rainer & Leuz, Christian & Schreiber, Sebastian, 2022. "Know your customer: Informed trading by banks," CFS Working Paper Series 705, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:cfswop:285369
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4365175
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/285369/1/1883089220.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2139/ssrn.4365175?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Skinner, Dj, 1994. "Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Bad-News," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 38-60.
    2. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini & Christopher Malloy, 2008. "The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(5), pages 951-979, October.
    3. Lummer, Scott L. & McConnell, John J., 1989. "Further evidence on the bank lending process and the capital-market response to bank loan agreements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 99-122, November.
    4. Robert M. Bushman & Abbie J. Smith & Regina Wittenberg‐Moerman, 2010. "Price Discovery and Dissemination of Private Information by Loan Syndicate Participants," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5), pages 921-972, December.
    5. Falko Fecht & Andreas Hackethal & Yigitcan Karabulut, 2018. "Is Proprietary Trading Detrimental to Retail Investors?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 1323-1361, June.
    6. James, Christopher, 1987. "Some evidence on the uniqueness of bank loans," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 217-235, December.
    7. Markus Behn & Rainer Haselmann & Paul Wachtel, 2016. "Procyclical Capital Regulation and Lending," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(2), pages 919-956, April.
    8. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    9. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in Propagation of the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 257-276, June.
    10. Lakonishok, Josef & Lee, Inmoo, 2001. "Are Insider Trades Informative?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 79-111.
    11. Lauren Cohen & Christopher Malloy & Lukasz Pomorski, 2012. "Decoding Inside Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(3), pages 1009-1043, June.
    12. Rajan, Raghuram G, 1992. "Insiders and Outsiders: The Choice between Informed and Arm's-Length Debt," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1367-1400, September.
    13. Andriy Bodnaruk & Massimo Massa & Andrei Simonov, 2009. "Investment Banks as Insiders and the Market for Corporate Control," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(12), pages 4989-5026, December.
    14. Michael Minnis & Andrew Sutherland, 2017. "Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 197-233, March.
    15. Puri, Manju, 1996. "Commercial banks in investment banking Conflict of interest or certification role?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 373-401, March.
    16. Ivashina, Victoria & Sun, Zheng, 2011. "Institutional stock trading on loan market information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 284-303, May.
    17. Amber Anand & Mehrdad Samadi & Jonathan Sokobin & Kumar Venkataraman, 2021. "Institutional Order Handling and Broker-Affiliated Trading Venues [Performance of institutional trading desks: An analysis of persistence in trading costs]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(7), pages 3364-3402.
    18. Carrizosa, Richard & Ryan, Stephen G., 2017. "Borrower private information covenants and loan contract monitoring," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 313-339.
    19. Allen, Franklin & Gale, Douglas, 1995. "A welfare comparison of intermediaries and financial markets in Germany and the US," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 179-209, February.
    20. Acharya, Viral V. & Johnson, Timothy C., 2007. "Insider trading in credit derivatives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 110-141, April.
    21. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1994. "The Benefits of Lending Relationships: Evidence from Small Business Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-37, March.
    22. Massoud, Nadia & Nandy, Debarshi & Saunders, Anthony & Song, Keke, 2011. "Do hedge funds trade on private information? Evidence from syndicated lending and short-selling," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 477-499, March.
    23. Utpal Bhattacharya & Hazem Daouk, 2002. "The World Price of Insider Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 75-108, February.
    24. Peter M. DeMarzo & Michael J. Fishman & Kathleen M. Hagerty, 1998. "The Optimal Enforcement of Insider Trading Regulations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(3), pages 602-632, June.
    25. Ke, Bin & Huddart, Steven & Petroni, Kathy, 2003. "What insiders know about future earnings and how they use it: Evidence from insider trades," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 315-346, August.
    26. Amber Anand & Mehrdad Samadi & Jonathan Sokobin & Kumar Venkataraman, 2021. "Institutional Order Handling and Broker-Affiliated Trading Venues," NBER Chapters, in: Big Data: Long-Term Implications for Financial Markets and Firms, pages 3364-3402, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    27. Utpal Bhattacharya, 2014. "Insider Trading Controversies: A Literature Review," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 385-403, December.
    28. Patrick Augustin & Menachem Brenner & Marti G. Subrahmanyam, 2019. "Informed Options Trading Prior to Takeover Announcements: Insider Trading?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(12), pages 5697-5720, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haselmann, Rainer & Leuz, Christian & Schreiber, Sebastian, 2021. "Know Your Customer: Relationship Lending and Bank Trading," LawFin Working Paper Series 22, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).
    2. de Jong, Abe & Kooijmans, Tim & Veld, Chris, 2022. "Legal risk and information spillover through private lender reports," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    3. Carrizosa, Richard & Ryan, Stephen G., 2017. "Borrower private information covenants and loan contract monitoring," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 313-339.
    4. Ting Chen & Xiumin Martin, 2011. "Do Bank‐Affiliated Analysts Benefit from Lending Relationships?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(3), pages 633-675, June.
    5. Richard Frankel & Bong Hwan Kim & Tao Ma & Xiumin Martin, 2020. "Bank Monitoring and Financial Reporting Quality: The Case of Accounts‐Receivable‐Based Loans," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(4), pages 2120-2144, December.
    6. Beyhaghi, Mehdi & Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony, 2017. "Why and how do banks lay off credit risk? The choice between retention, loan sales and credit default swaps," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 335-355.
    7. Allen N. Berger & Gregory F. Udell, 1994. "Lines of credit and relationship lending in small firm finance," Proceedings 52, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    8. Gorton, Gary & Winton, Andrew, 2003. "Financial intermediation," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 431-552, Elsevier.
    9. Hubbard, R Glenn & Kuttner, Kenneth N & Palia, Darius N, 2002. "Are There Bank Effects in Borrowers' Costs of Funds? Evidence from a Matched Sample of Borrowers and Banks," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 559-581, October.
    10. Botsch, Matthew & Vanasco, Victoria, 2019. "Learning by lending," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-14.
    11. João Santos, 1998. "Commercial Banks in the Securities Business: A Review," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 14(1), pages 35-60, July.
    12. Li, Xiaoyang & Lin, Shannon & Tucker, Alan L., 2016. "The curious case of converts," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-17.
    13. Jae B. Kim & Pervin Shroff & Dushyantkumar Vyas & Regina Wittenberg‐Moerman, 2018. "Credit Default Swaps and Managers’ Voluntary Disclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 953-988, June.
    14. Pappas, Kostas & Walsh, Eamonn & Xu, Alice Liang, 2019. "Real earnings management and loan contract terms," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 373-401.
    15. Boot, Arnoud W. A., 2000. "Relationship Banking: What Do We Know?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 7-25, January.
    16. Balachandran, Balasingham & Williams, Barry, 2018. "Effective governance, financial markets, financial institutions & crises," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-15.
    17. Rocholl, Jörg & Puri, Manju & Steffen, Sascha, 2011. "On the importance of prior relationships in bank loans to retail customers," Working Paper Series 1395, European Central Bank.
    18. Massa, Massimo & Zhang, Lei, 2015. "Fire Sales and Information Advantage: When Informed Investor Helps," CEPR Discussion Papers 10536, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Kumar, Nitish & Mullally, Kevin & Ray, Sugata & Tang, Yuehua, 2020. "Prime (information) brokerage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 371-391.
    20. Christian Bittner & Falko Fecht & Melissa Pala & Farzad Saidi, 2023. "Information Transmission between Banks and the Market for Corporate Control," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 250, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:cfswop:285369. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifkcfde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.