This paper investigates the impact of Basel III on the valuation of banks in the EEA through an event study of the stock market. It contributes to academic literature by enhancing the study by Bruno, Onali & Schaeck (2018) with another event date after the conclusion of their study.

This paper investigates two hypotheses: 1) Did the announcement by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision on December 7th, 2017 (the event), affect the market capitalization of banks in the EEA; 2) Did domestic liquidity regulation prior to Basel III positively affect how those banks' market capitalization changed in response to the event.

Using t-tests and a multivariate regression analysis, this study finds no statistical significance at a 10% level for either of the hypotheses. However, three findings appear to be found: 1) There was a small negative reaction to the event; 2) The negative reaction was larger for banks without prior regulation; and 3) The variance was larger for banks without prior regulation. These three findings all point towards both: 1) A negative effect from the event on banks’ market capitalization; and 2) A positive effect from prior domestic liquidity regulation. No statistically significant conclusions can be drawn from this study, however.

This study's largest limitation is that it does not account for expectations prior to the event, and an effect may thus already have been priced into the market capitalization prior to the event.