Catering to Investors Through Security Design: Headline Rate and Complexity

Claire  Célérier; Boris  Vallée

Article | Quarterly Journal of Economics | August 2017

Catering to Investors Through Security Design: Headline Rate and Complexity

by Claire Célérier and Boris Vallée

Abstract

This paper investigates the rationale for issuing complex securities to retail investors. We focus on a large market of investment products targeted exclusively at households: retail-structured products in Europe. We hypothesize that banks strategically use product complexity to cater to yield-seeking households by making product returns more salient and shrouding risk. We find four empirical results consistent with this view. First, we show that structured products with complex payoff formulas offer higher headline rates, and that they more frequently expose investors to a complete loss of their investment. We then document that banks are more inclined to issue high-headline-rate and more complex products in low-rate environments. Finally, we find that high-headline-rate and more complex products are more profitable for banks, and that their ex post performance is lower.

Keywords: financial complexity; catering; shrouding; Reaching for yield; Investment;

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Célérier, Claire, and Boris Vallée. "Catering to Investors Through Security Design: Headline Rate and Complexity." Quarterly Journal of Economics 132, no. 3 (August 2017): 1469–1508.

This paper investigates the so called liability management exercises by European banks, which bear comparable effects to triggering contingent capital. I first explore the determinants of these exercises. I then study market reactions to these operations as well as banks' economic performance following them. Debtors positively receive these exercises, while stockholders discriminate according to the terms of the operation. Moreover, banks implementing liability management exercises exhibit higher economic performance than the ones that do not. These findings point towards contingent capital offering an effective solution to the dilemma of bank capital regulation.

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Catering to Investors Through Security Design: Headline Rate and Complexity

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