Manal Khalil

The credit expansion policy and banking regulations have attracted widespread attention of bank regulators and policymakers over the last few years. This research aims to examine how the interest rate, prudential capital, and their interaction impact banking profitability in emerging economies like Egypt. The final sample of banks registered by the Central Bank of Egypt comprises 22 banks during the period of 2011–2020. The cross-sectional time-series Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression approach is used to estimate the panel data. The findings confirm that low-interest rates indeed harm banks’ profitability. In addition, higher prudential capital enhances the profitability of banks. Importantly, the impact of low-interest rates on bank profitability can be diminished only when banks are maintaining higher prudential capital. Based on the findings, it is recommended that bank managers and policymakers in Egypt as well as in similar emerging economies shall promote the application of the Basel Capital Accord to increasingly strengthen the profitability of banks, which in turn reinforces the performance of the banking sector, especially during low-interest rate times. The findings also reveal that bank-specific characteristics such as large bank size, increased efficiency, and less concentrated market enhance banks’ profitability. Overall, the findings of this research are highly relevant since improved profitability is one of the main objectives of bank supervisors and regulators.

Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Mr. Ali Shaker and Amira Ragab for their valuable support.

Economic policy uncertainty intensified as a result of the global financial crisis. To overcome these obstacles, firms handle issues with financial distress and crash risk more proactively. This paper offers new insights into the relationship between financial distress and crash risk on the Egyptian stock market during the period of 2014–2021 and presents how managers strengthen the bad news hoarding mechanism to their advantage. Data were collected via financial statements and reports obtained from the Thomson Reuters database using 824 annual observations of 103 Egyptian firms via the generalized method of moments and ordinary least squares. Results show a strong positive impact of financial distress on crash risk using OLS and GMM. Results support the role of managerial opportunism to cover up bad news that undermines a firm’s economic fundamentals. The findings support an agency theory of how financial distress affects crash risk. The findings support conducting robust tests for alternative financial distress and crash risk measures.