Regulatory Arbitrage and Loan Location Decisions by Multinational Banks

This paper examines the impact of international differences in capital regulation on multinational banks’ loan origination location decisions. International loan location decisions represent a key banking margin that has previously not been examined in the literature on regulatory arbitrage by banks. Our estimation relies on within-loan contribution variation in location options for individual multinational banks that participate in a syndicated loan. We examine how the loan location choice and the intensity of regulatory arbitrage are affected by borrower transparency. We find that greater borrower transparency to a local bank establishment makes loan location at this establishment more likely, and that regulatory arbitrage is more intense in the case of more transparent borrowers.