Cost implications of compliance with Basel III and competitiveness of internationally active banks

This dissertation investigates the third Basel Accord designed to provide a global regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and agreed market liquidity risk. Amongst other requirements, Basel III expects banks to hold top quality capital totalling 9.5% of their risk bearing assets by January 2019. Any bank that fails to meet the new requirements is expected to be banned from paying dividends to shareholders until it has improved its balance sheet. Full compliance with Basel III is expected to kick in by 2019. The author suggests that this new regulatory frame is arguably the most topical issue today amongst internationally active banks as they plan to be compliant, with the market already applying a multiple discount to banks with weaker capital positions especially the systemically important banks.