The Effect of the Balance Sheet Approach on the Usefulness of Accounting Information in Assessing Bank Default Risk

This study investigates the effect of the balance sheet approach, where financial reporting focuses on asset and liability valuation, on the usefulness of the capital adequacy ratio in the evaluation of bank default risk by credit rating agencies. We examine Japanese banks, which play the central role in the Japanese economy, and whose capital adequacy ratios are affected by the fair value measurement under the balance sheet approach. We adopt Demerjian’s (2011) approach to develop a bank-level measure of balance sheet focus. Although we find a significant positive correlation between the slack of the regulatory capital adequacy ratio and issuer rating, we find that this positive correlation is significantly weakened as a bank’s dependence on the balance sheet approach increases. The results suggest that the regulatory capital adequacy ratio based on a bank’s accounting information provides useful information for the evaluation of default risk but that rating agencies discount capital information that relies heavily on the balance sheet approach when estimating a bank’s default risk.