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In recent years financial conglomerates have been established throughout Europe. This horizontal diversification has attracted a great deal of attention in the banking and insurance sector, and has alarmed the supervisory authorities and the European Commission.
Financial Conglomerates: New Rules for New Players? gives a broad, innovative survey of the following aspects:
- it analyzes different sets of definitions of financial conglomerates, groups, consolidation criteria, etc., testing the practical effects of these definitions on the basis of a detailed relational database;
- although the benefits of financial conglomerates are straightforward, it is clear that quite a number of potential risks cannot be ignored;
- moreover, the differences in regulation of the solvency requirements for banks, insurance companies and investment firms are analyzed in order to look for a possible approach for calculating the necessary level of solvency for financial conglomerates.
Audience: Required reading for practitioners as well as academic researchers in both the financial and the insurance markets. Strategic as well as regulatory perspectives are relevant disciplines.
List of contents
Foreword. 1. Defining financial conglomerates. Combining economic and legal approaches. Appendix 1.A. Relevant definitions. 2. Defining financial conglomerates; Discussion. Appendix 2.A. Financial institutions. 3. Application of the most relevant definitions to the relational database. 4. Financial conglomerates; risks? 5. Solvency regulations for financial conglomerates. Appendix 5.A. Credit institutions. Appendix 5.B. Insurance companies. Appendix 5.C. Comparison of own funds. 6. Research into the possibility of a global approach for the calculation of the solvency requirements of financial conglomerates. Appendix 6.A. Theoretical problems in the application of the banking rules to insurance companies. Appendix 6.B. Simulation exercises. Appendix 6.C. Correction: minimum solvency levels. 7. Financial conglomerates, solvency and risks. Appendix 7.A. Thresholds and minimum guarantee funds. 8. Why financial conglomerates? Strategic issues. 9. Summary and conclusions. Index. Bibliographic references.
