We empirically test whether ownership concentration explains the cross-variation in systemic risk contribution for a sample of European banks over the 2004–2021 period and how this effect may vary depending on the category of the largest controlling shareholder. We explore two potential contagion channels: the risk-taking incentives and banks’ assets commonality. The results show that higher ownership concentration is associated with greater banks’ systemic risk contribution. Moreover, we find that banks’ systemic risk contribution is even stronger for banks where institutional investors or States are the largest controlling owners. Overall, our findings contribute to the literature examining the determinants of banks’ systemic risk in particular and financial stability as a whole and have several policy implications.

我们实证检验了所有权集中度是否可以解释 2004 年至 2021 年期间欧洲银行样本系统性风险贡献的交叉变化，以及这种影响如何根据最大控股股东的类别而变化。我们探讨了两种潜在的传染渠道：冒险激励和银行资产共性。结果表明，股权集中度越高，银行的系统性风险贡献越大。此外，我们发现，对于机构投资者或国家是最大控股所有者的银行来说，银行的系统性风险贡献甚至更大。总体而言，我们的研究结果有助于研究银行系统性风险（特别是整个金融稳定性）的决定因素，并具有多种政策含义。