Higher capital requirements and banks’ cost of capital : An empirical study of the Swedish major banks

Sammanfattning: In the wake of the financial crisis the systemic importance of banks for the stability of the financial system became evident. Finansinspektionen classifies the banks Nordea, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, Svenska Handelsbanken and Swedbank as systemically important for the Swedish financial system. The Basel accords strive to increase the resilience of banks and the financial system by imposing stricter regulatory capital requirements. It is debated how these restraints affect the banks’ cost of capital which prompt the first research question of the study: How has the increase in regulation regarding the capital structure of banks affected Sweden’s major banks’ cost of capital? According to Modigliani & Miller a firm’s cost of capital is independent of its capital structure. The second research question is thus: Does the development regarding Sweden’s major bank’s cost of capital align itself with the Modigliani-Miller theorem? The purpose of the study is thus to assess how the increase in regulatory capital requirements have affected the Swedish major banks’ cost of capital and to what extent these developments align with the Modigliani-Miller theorem. The researchers utilizes a quantitative method and collected secondary data for the period 2008 to 2016 to answer the formulated hypotheses which are deduced from the theoretical framework.   The results from the study illustrate significant correlations between increased regulatory capital requirements and the cost of capital. The authors can however not assert the irrelevance of capital structure for the banks’ cost capital but find that reduced tax shields only have modest effects on the banks’ cost of capital.