Panel Sessions

Panel Sessions are devoted to an open discussion of highly relevant policy issues; its participants are high profile personalities from academia, industry and politics, invited to participate in the session.

Bank Resolution

Thursday, August 26, 16:00-17:30, HZ 2

Session Chair: Jan Pieter Krahnen (Professor of Finance, Goethe University Frankfurt, and Director, Center for Financial Studies, House of Finance)
Participants:

• Douglas Diamond (Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance and George P. Shultz Faculty Fellow, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago)
• Robert L. McDonald (Erwin P. Nemmers Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University)
• Marti G. Subrahmanyam (Charles E. Merrill Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business, New York University)
• Luis Viceira (George E. Bates Professor of Finance, Harvard Business School)

In this session, eminent researchers discussed alternative ways to address moral hazard in banking, and how to re-introduce restructuring as a viable option for systemically important banks –even large institutions. The session addressed the pros and cons of contingent capital as a new financial instrument, the difficulties emanating from bank wind-downs when the distressed institutions have large derivative positions, and the impact of large bank failures on liquidity and prices in capital markets.

Future of Financial Regulation

Friday, August 27, 11:00-12:30, HZ 2
Session Chair: Hans-Helmut Kotz (Professor of Economics and Senior Fellow, Center for Financial Studies, House of Finance)
Participants:

• Svein Andresen (Secretary General, Financial Stability Board, Basel)
• Jörg Asmussen (Deputy Minister, Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Berlin)
• Thomas Jordan (Vice-Governor, Swiss National Bank, Bern)
• Christian Sewing (Chief Credit Officer, Deutsche Bank, London)

Regulatory authorities are internationally engaged in a re-design of the rules of the game for financial institutions and financial markets. The panel addressed these issues from three perspectives: an analytical angle (taking account of the micro- as well as the systemic dimension), the rule-making and international coordination viewpoint and, finally, possible responses of major market participants.

Transaction Taxes and Short-Selling Restrictions: Stability Tools or Dangerous Populism?

Friday, August 27, 14:00-15:30, HZ 2
Session Chair: Harald Hau (Associate Professor of Finance, INSEAD)
Participants:

• Richard Portes (Professor of Economics, London Business School, and President, CEPR)
• Carlos Tavares (Chair, Committee of European Security Regulators)
• Albert Menkveld (Associate Professor of Finance, University of Amsterdam)

Following a global banking crisis and ongoing concerns about sovereign default, political pressure in Europe is increasingly directed towards financial transaction taxes and short sales constraints. A panel of financial market specialists surveyed the available scientific evidence on the consequences of such measures for market efficiency and discusses their repercussions for financial stability in general.

Special Sessions

Special Sessions are sessions within the academic program having a supporting partner.

ECB Special Session on Liquidity, Imbalances and Systemic Risk

Friday, August 27, 9:00-10:30, HZ 10

Session Chair: Alex Stomper (Professor of Finance, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Responsible at ECB: Philipp Hartmann

One major lesson of the present crisis is that systemic risks have to be much better understood and contained. Liquidity problems are one of the major channels through which systemic events can emerge and where countervailing measures by central banks and regulatory authorities may be called for. This session featured three research papers analysing the role of liquidity problems in systemic risk, including how policy interventions affect liquidity holdings of financial intermediaries, how widespread liquidity imbalances can emerge and what the relevance of liquidity holdings are for how a crisis may propagate across the system.

SAC Special Session on Expected Stock Returns

Friday, August 27, 9:00-10:30, HZ 4

Session Chair: Maria Vassalou (Global Portfolio Manager, SAC Capital Advisors)

As new technologies enable market participants to react to new information with increasing rapidity, tight spreads and highly coupled markets may cause equity prices to swiftly and efficiently reflect new information. Nonetheless, many puzzles remain in explaining expected stock returns. This session, sponsored by SAC Capital, highlighted new research in equity market pricing anomalies.

Thomson Reuters Special Session on Mergers and Alliances

Friday, August 27, 14:00-15:30, HZ 6

Session Chair: Erik Theissen (Professor of Finance, University of Mannheim)

Despite a very large number of academic papers, both the causes and the consequences of corporate mergers and alliances are far from being fully understood. This session, sponsored by Thomson Reuters, offered important new insights. The first paper argued that mergers may be a way to avoid inefficient liquidations. The second paper showed empirically that mergers are not different from organic growth strategies in terms of their post-event returns. The third paper showed that both the formation and the value creation by alliances is related to corporate governance.