KREDIT und KAPITAL - Issue 3/2004


Contents


Articles

Schertler, Andrea
Explaining Cross-Country Variations in Venture Capital Investments: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Weill, Laurent
On the Relationship Between Competition and Efficiency in the EU Banking Sectors

Schiereck, Dirk and Stienemann, Marc
Wertsteigerung durch Desinvestitionen bei großen deutschen Konzernen

Schöning, Stephan
Der Grundsatz II der BaFin - eine kritische Beurteilung (Teil I)


Reports

Geigant, Friedrich
Das Wunder der Rentenmark


Book Reviews

Jennes, Barbara
Die Wirkung der Geldpolitik in Deutschland (Michael Frömmel)

Frowen, Stephan F. and Mc Hugh, Francis (ed.)
Financial Competition, Risk and Accountability - British and German Experiences (Anton Burger and Philipp Ulbrich)


Summaries

Schertler, Andrea
"Explaining Cross-Country Variations in Venture Capital Investments: Theory and Empirical Evidence"

This paper investigates why venture capital investments substantially vary across countries. Using a general equilibrium model, I show that the development of venture capital finance depends on the dominance of the banking market because bank finance determines a lower boundary of firms' user costs of capital. Moreover, this model shows that the level of venture capital investments is affected by the venture capitalists' costs of management support and monitoring services and the price for raising new funds from uninformed capital providers. Using dynamic panel techniques and a data set of 16 European countries, I test the implications of the model. I find, inter alia, that the lending rate has a positive and significant impact on early-stage investments. (JEL G 24, O 16, O 41)

top


Weill, Laurent
"On the Relationship Between Competition and Efficiency in the EU Banking Sectors"

Evidence is scarce regarding the impact of competition on efficiency in banking, even if it represents a very relevant issue to assess the benefits of a heightened banking competition. This work investigates the relationship between competition and efficiency in banking on a sample of 12 EU countries during the period 1994-1999. Competition is measured by the Rosse-Panzar H-Statistic, while efficiency is estimated with stochastic frontier approach. We provide support to a negative relationship between competition and efficiency in banking, which does not then corroborate the intuitive positive influence of competition on efficiency. (JEL G 21, L 12)

top


Schiereck, Dirk and Stienemann, Marc
"Value Increase by Way of Disinvestment by large German Industrial Groups"

Because of the great attention paid to mergers and acquisitions in the course of the last few years, the eyes of the academic world mostly focused on the visions of buyers and their synergy effect potentials as well as on the response of the capital market to the buyer side's shares. By contrast, the perspective of the other side - that of the seller - has hardly been analysed in Germany so far. Besides corporate unit sales within the framework of sell-offs, especially the carve-out and the spin-off instruments may be useful in this context.

The disinvestment frequency increased visibly in the course of the 1990s. Since the disastrous stock-exchange years of 2000 and 2001 saw many disinvestment cases as well, this trend in the wake of a stock-exchange boom cannot only be explained by the phenomenon of "fashionableness". Very few studies have hitherto attempted to identify and explain possible value increases in the wake of disinvestment. This is where the present article starts.

We show that share-price responses to disinvestment announcements have resulted in clearly positive abnormal yields. Disinvestment or at least its announcement effects creates value. This applies in particular to carve-outs as well as to sell-offs, though to a significantly smaller extent. There has not been any clustering of share-price responses by branches or by periods of time.

top


Schöning, Stephan
"Principle II of the German Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) - A Critical Review (Part I)"

Assuming that the liquidity risks faced by credit institutions have been systemised, this article describes the current treatment of credit institutions for banking supervisory purposes within the framework of principle II of BaFin. It shows that - compared with the preceding liquidity principles II and III - the structure of the present principle II has been subject to fundamental change. The focus is henceforth on the short-term area of up to one year for which a subdivision by four maturity bands has been envisaged. The liquid assets of credit institutions and the additions thereto largely originating in property stocks must be related to their payment obligations. In this context, payments of great relevance for the liquid resources of institutions are directly taken into account in the first maturity band whilst the other outflows of liquid resources are accommodated in the other maturity bands according to their probable residual maturities. The question whether this principle has been duly complied with is assessed exclusively on the basis of one-month liquidity ratios whereas the observation ratios to be computed for the other maturity bands are only meant to satisfy information needs. For certain sub-areas there is a legal requirement to record transactions of the balance sheet in a manner more closely oriented to liquidity effects. The extended scope of application of the liquidity principles has generated a need for adopting a number of exceptions so as to enable financial institutions with deviating business structures to meet these principles.

top


Reports

Geigant, Friedrich
"The Centenary Miracle"

A mixture of dexterous artifice and return to the principles of monetary discipline formed the success-promising concept applied by the creators of the new money that put an end to the horrific episode of the Great Inflation after the First World War. The Rentenmark's flair lay in its having been kept on short supply, from which fact it derived its purchasing power from a static point of view and its stability from a dynamic one. In this process, the Rentenmark never managed to obtain the status of a currency, and its bank notes never had the function of legal tender; from international transactions it had even been banned. The legal link between the Rentenmark notes on the one hand and the Goldmark-denominated Rentenbriefe as well as land charges on the other was considered a mass-psychological phenomenon. Nonetheless, through its creditworthiness, the Rentenmark underpinned the disavowed Mark in its last few months, and it managed to defend its position against the Reichsmark for a long period after the funeral hymns had faded away played for it by diverse legal acts.

top