TERRORIST ATTACKS AGAINST THE EUROPEAN BANKING INDUSTRY SINCE 2001

Relevance . Terrorist threats in the world are numerous, therefore biomedical consequences of terrorist attacks should be studied, along with their prevention. Intention . Analyze the biomedical consequences of terrorism in Russia and worldwide in 2005-2018 and calculate scientometric indicators of articles in the field of terrorism indexed in the Russian Science Index and Scopus. Methodology . The registered terrorist attacks and their biomedical consequences were studied in the world and in Russia according to the Global Terrorism Index, the EMERCOM and the Russian Ministry of Health. The abstract-bibliographic databases of the Russian Science Citation Index and Scopus were searched for journal scientific articles and whether these articles were considered relevant by readers. Results and Discussion. In 2005-2018 annually (8.1 ± 1.3) thousand terrorist attacks were registered in the world with (19.2 ± 3.4) thousand fatalities, including the terrorists themselves, and sanitary losses amounted to (25.4 ± 2.9) thousand people. In the period under study, these indicators tended to increase. On average, there were (2.4 ± 0.2) dead and (3.7 ± 0.4) injured per 1 terrorist attack in the world. The average annual economic damage from terrorism amounted to (51.7 ± 7.9) billion US dollars. According to the EMERCOM of Russia, in 2005-2017 (there were no terrorist attacks in 2018) 57 major terrorist attacks were recorded, in which 366 people were killed and 1717 people were injured. On average, 6-7 people died and 30 people were injured per 1 major terrorist attack. The ratio of dead and injured was 1 : 4.7. Over the same period, according to the Russian Ministry of Health, 1,100 terrorist attacks were recorded, in which 898 people died and 4,860 people were injured. On average, 1 person was killed and 4-5 people were injured per terrorist attack. The ratio of fatalities and injured was 1 : 5.4. A decrease in the number of terrorist attacks, irrevocable and sanitary losses is noted. Injured with extremely severe injuries due to terrorist attacks amounted to 8.1 %, severe - 18.2 %, moderate - 30.4 %, mild injuries - 43.4 %. Over time, there is a decrease in the proportion of extremely severe and severe conditions of injured, relative stabilization of the proportion of moderate conditions, and an increase in mild conditions. It is necessary to continue work on coordination of registration of emergencies in the EMERCOM of Russia and the Ministry of Health of Russia to improve reservation of funds to eliminate their consequences. The search in the Russian Science Citation Index and Scopus revealed 18,334 and 12,836 scientific articles, respectively, including 4,200 and 151 publications on biomedical consequences of terrorist attacks, over 2005-2018. There is a high demand for articles on the biomedical consequences of terrorism in Scopus: 81.5 % of publications were cited at least once, the average number of citations per article was 15.31. In the Russian Science Citation Index the scientometric indices were much smaller - 44.4 % and 1.70, respectively. Conclusion. The analysis of publications showed that use of medium and high power ionizing radiation sources, toxic chemical and biological agents in terrorist acts in the world is possible only if they are stolen from state organizations or if they are transferred by state organizations to third parties. At the same time, it should be noted that in the modern world, none of the countries, including Russia, can be recognized as adequately prepared to confront nuclear (radiological), chemical and biological terrorism. The most likely counteraction to such terrorist attacks are international conventions on the production, control and non-proliferation of highly toxic agents in the world. Databases of the Russian Science Index and Scopus open up great information to researchers on the study of terrorism. In addition to improving the innovative content of domestic articles, Russian scientists should include more citations from colleagues.

This paper aims to examine some significant implications of the new European single banking supervision for the economics of banking and the market of financial services. It is one of the three pillars of the European Banking Union architecture, as part of a longer-term vision for further economic and monetary integration in EU. The new supervisory mechanisms implies a huge and complex transfer of powers from national authorities to the European Central Bank. It aims to ensure the safety and soundness of the European banking system, to increase financial integration and stability, and to permit consistent supervision. Banks are being held to common supervisory standards. The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 1 introduces the paper and outlines the general context of the study. Section 2 analyzes some organizational and regulatory issues of the single supervisory scheme. Section 3 examines the comprehensive assessment of the main banks performed by the European Central Bank together with the national supervisors. Section 4 discusses the implications of the single supervisory mechanism for banks' business models and management, and explores some of the challenges likely to be faced by the supervised banks. This section also sheds some lights on relevant drawbacks of the single prudential supervisory approach. Section 5 concludes.

The global financial crisis has raised new policy debates regarding the bank's size, especially among the largest banks. Using nonparametric, local‐linear methods, we provide new estimates of scope economies in cost, revenue, and profit for European commercial banks during 2000–2020. Our findings reveal that a substantial proportion of banks demonstrated economies of scope (EOS) annually: approximately 45% in cost, at least 61% in revenue, and no less than 67% in profit. These findings indicate that EOS may partly account for the sustained growth and expansion of European banks during this period.

The banking industry has one of the most active markets for mergers and acquisitions. However, little is known about the type of operational strategies adopted by banking firms in the years following a deal. For a sample of bidding banks in the USA and Europe, this study compares the design and performance implications of different post‐merger strategies in both geographical regions. Using accounting data, we show that European banks pursue a cost‐cutting strategy by increasing efficiency levels vis‐à‐vis non‐merging banks and by cutting back on both labour costs and lending activities. US banks, on the other hand, raise both interest and non‐interest income in the post‐merger period.

ABSTRACTIn this study, we examine the effect of increased tax transparency on the tax planning behavior of European banks. In 2014, the European Union introduced public country‐by‐country reporting requirements to the banking industry. Treating this new requirement as an exogenous shock, we find limited evidence consistent with a decline in income shifting by the banks' financial affiliates in the post‐adoption period (starting from 2015). We do not, however, find robust evidence of a significant change in the consolidated book effective tax rates among the affected banks. Our findings suggest that increased transparency from public country‐by‐country reporting can deter tax‐motivated income shifting but that it did not appear to materially influence the banks' overall tax avoidance. Our findings have policy implications for the ongoing debate between the European Parliament, the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, and accounting standard‐setting bodies on whether to require multinationals to publish country‐by‐country reports.

This article gives a summary of key developments in the European banking industry before and during the global financial crisis, with a focus on trends following the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The purpose is to provide an overview with conclusions on the European banking sector's actual and upcoming trends following the COVID-19 pandemic, based on scientific research and reports from selected international financial institutions. The crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the global consolidation process and the advancement of financial technologies, particularly in European banks. In light of the financial crisis' uncertainty and the widespread use of "lockdown" measures, banks in Europe launched a race to digitalize business activities. Banks will also increasingly utilize mergers and acquisitions as a strategy for business model change as competition heats up in the market. However, European banking is undergoing a transformation driven mostly by technological advances. This is both for financial reasons and to stay relevant in the highly competitive digital banking landscape. Green finance are also becoming increasingly popular as a means of promoting environmental sustainability.

This paper aims at assessing the extent to which M&As in European banking sector over the 1996-2003 period result in two simultaneous catching up and convergence processes of consolidating groups. First, do the M&As significantly contribute to the consolidating banks to catch-up the productivity benchmark? Second in terms of synergies or complementarities among business lines, is there a convergence process of output mixes among the individual banks of the M&A operations? Our sample concerns 42 M&A transactions and 587 non-merging banks in Europe. As a main conclusion, M&A operations in the European banking industry appeared to be essentially motivated by an objective of improving complementarities among lines of work from each component of M&As rather than to increase productivity at the merged bank level.

Network tail risk estimation in the European banking system

Minorities in the United States have often been treated unfairly by law enforcement agencies. Prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, Blacks were the main victims of racial profiling. Since the terrorist attack, however, Arabs and Muslims are becoming the primary targets for profiling by law enforcement agencies. There are some remarkable similarities between the profiling of Blacks and the profiling of Arabs and Muslims. In both cases, the fundamental problems with racial profiling are that it violates the civil liberties of innocent people and denies minorities the equal protection of the law. The War on Terror has redefined racial profiling. It has not only led to a shift in the target population, but it has also changed the ways in which racial profiling is conducted.

Technological catch-up, nonmonotonicity, and convergence: Parametric evidence from the BRICS and European banking systems

During the global financial crisis, European banks sharply contracted foreign claims on recipient economies. This paper examines the impact of that deleveraging on credit supply in recipient economies, with a particular focus on Asia. Identification is achieved by exploiting heterogeneity in the ex-ante patterns of funding reliance on different European banking systems, and in variation in the ratio of local claims in local currency to total foreign claims in recipient economies. These sources of variation are used to create instruments for the deleveraging shock. We find that the contraction of foreign claims in European bank was associated with a substantial reduction in domestic credit supply in a broad sample of countries. However, the credit supply response in Asia was only about half the size of the response in non-Asian countries, possibly due to stronger policy response and healthier local bank balance sheets in the Asian countries at the outset of the crisis.

Risk committee complexity and liquidity risk in the European banking industry

The question of whether private investors can discriminate between the risk taken by banks is empirically investigated by testing the risk sensitivity of European banks' subordinated notes and debentures (SND) spreads. A unique dataset of spreads, ratings, and accounting measures of bank risk is used for a sample of SND issued during the 1991-2000:Q1 period. Moody's Bank Financial Strength (MBFS) and FitchIBCA Individual (FII) ratings, which omit the influence of government and other external support on risk borne by investors, are used as bank risk proxies together with accounting variables to explain the variability of spreads. Empirical results support the hypothesis that SND investors are sensitive to bank risk, with the exception of SND issued by public sector banks, i.e., government owned or guaranteed institutions. Results also show that the sensitivity of SND spreads to measures of stand-alone risk (i.e., measures that do not incorporate external guarantees) has been increasing from the first to the second part of the 1990s, with the perception of too-big-to-fail type guarantees by private investors gradually disappearing. This result can be attributed to the joint effect of the loss of monetary policy by national central banks and the public budget constraints imposed by the European Monetary Union (EMU).

The transition to low-fossil-fuel-economy shifts away those companies that are exposed to climate risks. By applying a panel data analysis over a sample of 45 listed European banks, spanning from the period that goes from 2014 to 2020, our findings show that investors, before the introduction of the EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan in 2018, demand higher compensation for banks that include high-carbon-intensive activities, as a hedge of climate change risks. However, when the EU sustainable regulation has been put in place, the correlation between banks’ carbon emissions and returns drops, providing a positive impulse for promoting sustainable investments, prompting the so-called portfolio decarbonisation process.

Product Diversification in the European Banking Industry: Risk and Loan Pricing Implications