Together, the empirical facts established in this paper suggest that capital regulation and buffers may only be of second order importance in determining the capital structure of most banks. Hence, our paper sheds new light on the debate whether regulation or market forces determine banks’ capital structures. Barth et al. (2005), Berger et al. (2008) and Brewer et al. (2008) observe that the levels of bank capital are much higher than the regulatory minimum. This could be explained by banks holding capital buffers in excess of the regulatory minimum. Raising equity on short notice in order to avoid.
