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.
