Capital structure and regulatory capital of French banks

Our paper consists mainly to shed light into the field of bank capital structure and regulatory capital. We use the panel data set of bank leverage and tier 1 capital ratio. Our dataset comprises the 172 French banks; commercial banks, cooperative banks, investment banks and saving banks covering the period of 2002 to 2012. We estimate models with generalized method of moments (GMM). Our results support both the theory of corporate finance and the buffer view, where a tendency towards the latter seems to be evident for banks. This is consistent with an effect of capital regulation on bank capital structure. We introduce also Tier 1 capital ratio as an explanatory variable to analyse the effect of capital regulation. However, Tier 1 capital total for banks seems to be increased. This implies that Risk-Weighted Assets increased, which may stem from internal model improvements. Furthermore, we show that the number of unprofitable, dividend-paying banks decreased. Our result indicates that this type of risk-shifting, where equity holders are favored over debt holders. The issuance of equity seems to be applied as a last remedy used when earnings are declining. All these findings are confirmed after taking into account an alternative measure the regulatory capital ratio in order to examine the capital regulation compliance of banks. Our finding contributes to the lack of the literature by investigating in this field of research. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.