UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE EFFECT OF BANK CAPITAL AND OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE ON BANK PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE IN VIETNAM BY NGUYEN THI VIET ANH HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2015 VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE EFFECT OF BANK CAPITAL AND OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE ON BANK PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE IN VIETNAM ------------------o0o---------------- Thesis Instructor: Dr. Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh Student: Nguyen Thi Viet Anh CLASS 20 Ho Chi Minh City, December 2015 DECLARATION I, Nguyen Thi Viet Anh hereby declare that this thesis is my own work under the guidance of instructor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh. It has not yet been presented and will not be presented to any similar or other degrees.
Date: 2nd December 2015 Signature Nguyen Thi Viet Anh i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my main supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh, for her candid comments, helpful hints and valuable scientific guidance during times of deployment, research and completion of this thesis. I am greatly indebted to the Board of Directors, the teachers and all staff in Vietnam-Netherlands Programme for M.A in Development Economics– VNP, for their directly teaching, conveying knowledge and experiences as well as supporting me and my class-mates necessary information in the last two years. I express my heartfelt thanks to General Director of Asia Commercial Bank - Mr.
Do Minh Toan, the Board of Managers of ACB Saigon Branch – Mr. Ngo Tan Long and Ms. Bui Thi Anh Hoa for advice and creation of all favorable conditions for my work to attending VNP. I am grateful to Dr.
Pham Phu Quoc and Dr. Truong Dang Thuy, who suggested research topic and gave me enthusiastic guidance in the early stages of writing the concept note and thesis research design. I greatly express my special thanks to my colleagues at The Center for Corporate Credit and Financial Institutions – Asia Commercial Bank, ACB Securities Company – ACBS, for supporting me in collecting data; colleagues at ACB - Saigon Branch, especially Corporate Department, for being always cooperative, enthusiastically supporting and encouraging me. I would like to acknowledge the enthusiastic help of fellow practitioners VNP - Class 20, especially these members, Nguyen Son Kien, Vo Tan Thanh Diep, ii Nguyen Le Phuong Linh, Nguyen Phuong Tram and Vu Thi Thuong, for being my close companions during the last two school years.
Finally, I wish to dedicate this thesis for my family, my parents, siblings, especially my dear husband, Nguyen Hoang Than for trust, love, sharing, help, following, encouragement and being always beside me. I would also like to thank my lovely children, little daughter, Nguyen Hoang Viet Ha and little son, Nguyen Hoang Quan. You are the endless motivation that helps me overcome all difficulties and move forward. iii ABSTRACT This study aimed at assessing the impact of capital structure and ownership structure on Vietnamese bank performance.
The study used secondary data of forty- nine Vietnamese banks with 387 observations in the period 2005-2014, employing Feasible General Least Square as well as Discoll-Kraay Robust for cross-sectional dependenceestimation. Empirical results show that capital structure is significantly and positively related to Vietnamese bank performance. Meanwhile, ownership structure impact negatively on profitability of Vietnamese banks (measuring by returns on total assets). The findings indicate that the profitability of the Private Banks is higher than the State-owned ones.
Keys words:Bank performance, Capital structure, Ownership structure, Net Interest Margin, Returns on Assets, Returns on Equity. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. IV LIST OF TABLES. VIII LIST OF FIGURES.
IX LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.1 General research objective .2 Specific research objectives .4 Significances of the study .5 Scope of the Study. 6 CHAPTER 2:LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Capital structure theory developed by Modigliani and Miller (MM Model) .2 The trade – off theory .3 Agency cost theory.1 Bank capital structure and Bank performance .2 Ownership structure and bank performance .19 CHAPTER 3:RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .2 scope of Study .1 Bank performance measures: .1 The Pooled OLS method .2 The Fixed Effects Model (FEM) .3 The Random Effects Model (REM) .4 Relevant tests to choose the most appropriate estimation method .5 The Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS) .6 Discoll-Kraay Robust for cross-sectional dependence – XTSCC .7 Problem of Endogeneity .36 CHAPTER 4:EMPIRICAL FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS .2 The overview on Vietnamese banks .1 Explanatory variables and bank performance .2 Control variables and bank performance .5 Robustness test - common panel data methods .50 CHAPTER 5:CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS .3 Limitation of the study .4 Suggestions for further studies .69 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2-1 – Indirect performance indicators for financial institutions .9 Table 3-1 Definitions of variables in equation 3.28 Table 4-1 Summary statistics for variables. 46 Table 4-3 Vif index .46 Table 4-4 Results from feasible generalized least square (fgls) and discoll-kraay robust for cross-sectional dependence (xtscc) .47 Table 4-5 Regression result of nim model. 51 Table 4-6 Regression result of roa model .52 Table 4-7 The results of f test and breusch – pagan test .53 Table 4-8 Hausman test .9 Test of heteroskedasticity .10 Test of autocorrelation .54 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2-1 Components of Capital Structure.
8 Figure 2-2 Static trade-off theory of capital structure. 13 Figure 2-3 Conceptual Framework. 19 Figure 4-1 Banks' Charter Capital updated to December 31th, 2014. 38 Figure 4-2 Vietnamese banks’ total assets in the period 2005-2014.
39 Figure 4-3 Vietnamese banks’ total equity capital in the period 2005-2014. 40 Figure 4-4 The Return on Total Assets of the Vietnamese banks in the period 2005-2014 41 Figure 4-5 The Return on Total Equity of the Vietnamese banks in the period 2005-2014 42 Figure 4-6 The Net Interest Margins of the Vietnamese banks in the period 2005-2014. 43 Figure 4-7 The average equity ratio and ROA, ROE, NIM of the Vietnamese banks in the period 2005-2014. 44 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DEA Data Envelopment Analysis technique FEM Fixed Effects Model Pooled OLS Pooled Ordinary Least Squares REM Random Effects Model ROA Returns on Total Assets ROE Returns on Total Equity FGLS Feasible Generalized Least Square XTSCC Discoll-Kraay Robust for cross-sectional dependence x Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT One of the main causes leading to the global financial crisis in 2007-2008 period is the weakness of the banking system.
In particular, it might be due to the credit institutions do not comply strictly with the regulations on capital adequacy (Norgren, 2010). Due to the severe consequences of the global financial crisis and their long-term effects on the global banking and financial system, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision drafted and promulgated the third edition (Basel III) with changes and improvements in order to stabilize the banking system as the main objectives. Focusing on raising equity capital standards, Basel III aims at three major issues. First, it requires an increase in the minimum common equity capital ratio from 2% to 4.
Second, while the minimum total capital is maintained at 8%, the high-quality capital standards, i. equity capital and Tier 1 capital standards have been increased. Specifically, the minimum Tier 1 capital increases from 4% in Basel II to 6% in Basel III. Besides, the assets with inherent quality issues will be gradually eliminated from Tier 1 capital and Tier 2 capital, as these investments exceed the limit of 15% of financial institutions.
In particular, the Basel III requirements apply additional minimum leverage ratio of 3%. This is the ratio of Tier 1 capital to total assets plus off-balance sheet items. Applying this ratio allows the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to monitor changes in financial leverage ratio that the banks make in accordance with economic cycles and the relationship between capital requirements and leverage ratio. In Vietnam, after the global financial crisis, Vietnamese commercial banks were exposed to many problems of instability.
One of the most important factors affecting the competitiveness of Vietnamese commercial banks was the weak financial capability, especially the extremely low level of equity capital. With the aim of enhancing the banking system performance and stability, on March, 1st, 1 2012, the Prime Minister issued the plan to restructure the system of banks and other credit institutions during the period 2011-2015 with Decision 254 / QĐ-TTg. According to this process, the Prime Minister required the Ministry of Finance combine with the State Bank of Vietnam to approve plan to increase charter capital of State-owned Commercial Banks. From 2008 until now, Vietnamese commercial banks have actively increased their registered capital to meet the regulatory requirement of capital under the provisions of Decree No.141 / 2006 / ND-CP and Decree 10/2011 / ND-CP dated 26/01/2011 on amending and supplementing some articles of Decree 141.
To achieve such requirement, all commercial banks implemented different approaches, such as selling shares to domestic or foreign shareholders, merging with other joint stock commercial bank(s). Besides that, Decision 254/QĐ-TTg also required State-owned Corporations gradually exit their investment capital in the credit institutions. The equitization of state-owned commercial banks and decreasing state-owned capital in these bank are also seen as a solution to reduce state ownership and increase the capacity of the banks based on various ownership structures (state, economic entities and individuals come from foreign countries) aiming at increasing competitiveness. There are many studies examining the impact of capital structure as well as ownership structure on bank performance.
Based on agency problem (Jensen and Meckling, 1976), the agency view suggests that the banks with higher equity capital ratio have lower profitability (Berger and Di Patti, 2006). Bank management suffers less pressure to maximize the value of the banks which maintain higher equity capital ratio. This causes conflicts between management and shareholders so agency cost increases. On the other hand, many other researches prove that well-capitalized capital impacts positively on bank performance.
Using US banking system data in period 1984: Q.Berger and Bouwman (2013) suggested that equity capital enhances bank performance through three channels. Higher equity capital banks 2 require managers to monitor more and choose safer portfolios to invest. Bank with higher equity capital can make customers, investors and other partner believe that it is more reliable and safer so the banks can mobilize deposit money with lower interest rates as well as increase the volume of loans. Therefore they can improve performance and increase market share as well.
Supporting this view, Demirgüç- Kunt & Huizinga (1999); Maudos & Guevara (2004); Fiordelisi et al., (2011); Chortareasa et al., (2012) remark that higher equity capital ratio can improve bank efficiency. Study on determinants of Net Interest Margin in Vietnamese Commercial Banks, Thu and Huyen (2014) indicate that leverage impacts positively on Net Interest Margin. However, their study uses data for thirty-three commercial banks in the period 2008-2011 with lower observations than my one. Phuc (2014) uses the data of 217 companies listed on the Ho Chi Minh City and Ha Noi Stock Exchange in the period 2007 to 2012 to study the effects of capital structure on the performance of the company after equitisation.
The findings show that long-term debt has a positive impact on ROA and ROE, while short-term debt and total debt have a negative impact on business performance measured by ROA and ROE. Research on the relationship between ownership structure and bank efficiency by using cost and profit frontier approach to examine efficiency of banks with different ownership types in German, Altunbas, Evans et al. (2001) shows that public banks are less efficient than privately owned banks. Study on ownership structure reform in Nigeria in period 2004-2006, Ani, Odo et al.
(2012) points out that government ownership is negatively correlated with bank performance. Uses data for commercial banks in 179 countries around the world in period 1995-2002 to examine the relationship between ownership and bank performance, Micco, Panizza et al.