Political Connections and Capital Structure in the GCC Banks

Fatma Ahmed and Mohammed Elgammal

Chapter 13 in Banking Resilience:New Insights on Corporate Governance, Sustainability and Digital Innovation, 2024, pp 453-479 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: This chapter investigates the impact of political connections on capital structure choices in GCC banks. Applying the generalized method of moments (GMM) shows that neither the pecking order theory nor the trade-off theory conclusively predicts capital structure in the GCC banks. The results show that GCC banks adjust toward the optimal leverage with a speed equal to 43%. However, politically connected banks have the fastest speed of adjustment (60%) as it has often had large amounts of capital, which in sequence cut transaction costs and accelerate the speed of adjustment. The main drivers of capital structure choices are profitability, growth, coverage ratio, and size. We find that size and growth are positively associated with the banks’ leverage while the risk is negatively affected by leverage.

Keywords: Corporate Governance, Board Characteristics, Board Structure, Banking Institutions, Historical Literature Review, Financial Crisis, Bank Risk, CEO, Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, Bank Efficiency, Board Governance, Board Size, Board Independence, Gender Diversity, Blau Index, Risk-adjusted Bank Performance, Tobin's Q, Return-on-Risk-Adjusted-Capital, Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, Board Diversity, Bank Risk, Bank Performance, Cost Efficiency, Bank Stability, Cultural Openness, Women Directors, Foreign Directors, Directors Educational Level, Islamic Banks, Board Diversity, Gender Diversity, Gender Quota, Emerging Economy, Bank Outcomes, Attendance, Board Effectiveness, Private Banks, Public Sector Banks, India, Corporate Social Responsibility, ESG, Sustainable Finance, Responsible Investing, Socially Responsible Banks, Risk Management, Stakeholder Engagement, Financial Stability, Sustainability, Firm Value, Climate Finance, Policy Uncertainty, Financial Stability, Climate Risk, Bibliometric Analysis, Financial Markets, Financial Assets, Asset Pricing, Capital Flows, Sustainability, Accruals, Earnings Management, Accounting Value, National Culture , Cultural Dimensions , Collective Intelligence , Secrecy, Intelligence Quotient, International Accounting, Covid-19, Pandemic, Impact, Risk, GCC Banks, GCC Islamic Banks, Conventional Banks, Profitability, Capitalization, Resilience, Asset-based Indicators, Bank, China, Density, Diversification, FinTech, Focus, Income-Based Indicators, Kernel, Quantile Regression, Big Data, Economic Capital, Emerging Markets, FinTech, GARCH-M (1; 1), GCC Financial Markets, Liquidity Risk, Reinforcement Machine Learning, Risk Management, Portfolio Management, Liquidity-Adjusted Value at Risk, Risk Metrics, Risk Spillover Effects, Internet Finance, GARCH Models, VaR Models, CoVaR Models, Securities Firms, COVID-19, Systemic Risks, China, Regulatory Reporting, Systemic Risk, Financial Stability, SupTech, RegTech, Financial Reporting, Algorithmic Data Standards, Blockchain, Financial Crisis, BCBS 239, Banks, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Political Connections, Trade-Off Theory, Pecking Order Theory, Capital Structure, Risk, Profitability, Speed Of Adjustment, Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), Flash Crash, High Frequency Traders, Regulatory Framework, Algorithms, Algorithmic Trading (AT), Financial Market, Capital Market, (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G3 G34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9781800614291_0013 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9781800614291_0013 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781800614291_0013

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().