The beneficial effect of common ownership: Evidence from bank liquidity creation

Abstract

We argue a positive association between common ownership and liquidity creation because common ownership increases risk-absorption capacity through higher profit margins, greater equity capital, and improved disclosure quality. Accordingly, we find solid evidence that banks with greater common ownership create 3.56%–4.54% more liquidity. The beneficial effect on liquidity creation is dominant for banks with high risk-absorption capacities, enhanced disclosure quality, low competition, greater long-term shareholdings, and low performance-sensitive managerial incentives, substantiating our theoretical conjectures and establishing five significant channels. Finally, we show that banks have incentive to create more liquidity when they have significant co-ownerships among themselves. Our main findings remain robust to multiple proxies, alternative specifications, and three methods to address endogeneity concerns – difference-in-differences based on the Blackrock–Barclays Global Investors merger in 2009, two-stage least squares analysis with instrumental variables based on Russell 2000 index inclusion, and propensity score matching.