Openness, profit opportunities and foreign banking

Using new data from the World Bank and OCC surveys, we show correlations across a wide range of countries between foreign banking and domestic economic, financial and bank regulatory conditions. Foreign banking tended to be more prevalent in countries that were more open to foreign ownership of their banks, more open to banks’ engaging in a wider range of financial activities and more open to international trade. Restrictions on foreign ownership of domestic banks that were in place in the late 1970s reduced the current extent of foreign banking. Foreign banking was negatively correlated with current restrictions on banks’ securities, insurance and real estate activities. Countries that had more international trade tended to have more foreign banking. Foreign banking was more pervasive in countries where banking was more profitable and where the domestically-owned banking sector was smaller relative to GDP.     

Aspects of international financial services

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues related to international financial services, particularly foreign direct investment in banking. The paper discusses the challenges of measuring incomes generated from the activities of multinational banks, including their international lending and direct investment in host countries. The paper highlights the complementary role of FDI and trade in financial services and discusses investment in banking services. The patterns of FDI in banking in Eastern European countries, Latin America and East Asia are also analysed with a focus on the costs and benefits of FDI in banking in the emerging countries.     

Concentration of world banking and the role of U.S. banks among the 100 largest, 1956–1980

During the past two decades, international banking activity has grown rapidly. With institutional change of such magnitude taking place, it is interesting and potentially useful to look at the nature of the change. This paper examines two dimensions of this change: the trend in concentration of banking assets in the world's largest banks, and the relative position of banks from various countries among the world's largest banks. The data indicate that the percentage of banking deposits accounted for by the world's largest banks generally has increased steadily since 1956. The data also reveal that the importance of U.S. banks within the world's largest banks has declined dramatically since 1956. It is suggested that this trend is the result of the readjustment to the distortions of WWII, the rise of the commercial paper market in the U.S., and the large number of U.S. banks compared to other countries.     

International investment in financial services

This paper analyzes and models the significant components of international trade in financial services, namely, foreign direct investment in banking for the US, the UK and Germany. It distinguishes between banks' activities abroad and FDI in banking by banks and non-banks. A model for FDI in banking is proposed which contains certain explanatory variables peculiar to FDI in banking as compared to FDI in manufacturing. The components of the model of FDI in banking is different from those models designed to explain banks activities abroad. The empirical results of this study of FDI in banking indicate that bilateral trade, banks' foreign assets, the cost of capital, relative economic growth, exchange rates and FDI in non-finance industries are the major determinants of foreign investment in banking.     

U.S. financial deregulation : Upheaval and promise

Financial deregulation in the U.S. has ample ramifications for international banking. For U.S. based international banks, the deregulation shifts the emphasis back to the now deregulated U.S. market. For foreign banks in the U.S. deregulation is a mixed blessing. One aspect of the deregulation is interstate banking, another is merger across industry lines. Thus Parker, a pen manufacturer, owns several financial institutions including a bank. All this functional integration may be exaggerated. Banks will continue to operate more or less as they have done in the past. The changes will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary in nature, and they will lead our industry from the production of banking services to the production of financial services.     

Financial Exposure and the International Transmission of Financial Shocks

This paper analyzes the transmission mechanism of banking sector shocks in an international real business cycle model with heterogeneous bank sizes. We examine to what extent the financial exposure of the banking sector affects the transmission of foreign banking sector shocks. In our model, the more exposed domestic banks are to the foreign economy via lending to foreign firms, the greater are the spillovers from foreign financial shocks to the home economy. The model highlights the role of openness to trade and the dynamics of the terms of trade in the international transmission mechanism of banking sector shocks: spillovers from foreign banking sector shocks are greater the more open the home economy is to trade and the less the terms of trade respond to foreign shocks.     

手机银行差异化发展策略浅议

手机银行越来越成为改变金融业竞争格局的新型服务渠道。同时也是现代商业银行应对竞争的一种必然选择。随着我国金融业开放程度进一步扩大,中外银行在新业务领域的竞争将更加激烈。因此,银行业大力发展手机银行,应该迎接个性化、多元化、国际化等各个方面的挑战,走差异化路线。本文结合实际,提出了手机银行差异化发展的五个可行方向,试图提高手机银行业务对客户的吸引力。     

International financial services: determinants of banks’ foreign assets held by non-banks

Banks’ foreign assets held by non-banks are part of the growing volume of international trade in financial services. This paper investigates, for the first time, the determinants of banks’ assets held by non-banks for Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The underlying model used to measure banks’ foreign assets held by non-banks in this study, is based on those models which have measured the determinants of banks’ total foreign assets and international inter-bank activities. The empirical results of this model suggest a positive relationship with foreign direct investment in banking and banks’ foreign assets held by non-banks. Other significant factors identified include bilateral trade, the value of national income, and the real interest rate differential. Furthermore, banks’ foreign assets held by non-banks are found to be significantly related to the respective level of inter-bank dealings, such that a restriction on the overall amount of activities exists. Finally, global bank flows of opposite directions are found to be positively correlated, highlighting the fact that the perceived risk of foreign lending is reduced by simultaneous increases in banks’ foreign liabilities.     

International bank-industry relations: An empirical assessment

This paper examines the determinants of the provision of banking services in host countries of multinational companies, based on an empirical study of these relationships in the case of France. Factors evaluated include: the traditional banking relationships in the multinational's home country, the strengths and weaknesses of indigenous and foreign banks in the host environment, the specific nature of the banking service required, and the nature of bank reputation in the host country.     

Sources of growth in international insurance services

The purpose of this paper is to analyse international insurance services. It defines international insurance services in the context of the new definition of trade in financial services. Cross-border trade and foreign direct investment in insurance services are categorised into four distinct groups, based on the movement of providers and receivers of insurance services. The empirical results of a model of the movement of providers in insurance services indicate that insurance premiums and the national income of the host countries contribute to the expansion of multinational insurance companies. Furthermore, bilateral trade, labor costs, economic growth and the cost of capital are also contributing to the expansion of international insurance services. In addition, the empirical results indicate that FDI in banking is a complement to the expansion of international insurance services.     

银行企业国际化动因理论综述

根据现有银行企业国际化文献,本文把银行企业国际化动因的研究归纳为经营优势理论、对外直接投资理论、引导效应理论、连续性阶段理论、内部化理论和经营效益理论六大流派.在对这些理论内容进行回顾的基础上,认为这些理论都是从不同侧面解释银行企业国际化动机的产物,在具有一定合理性的同时也存在局限性.相比较而言,经营效益理论应成为银行国际化经营的出发点和归宿.     

Do foreign banks increase competition? Evidence from emerging Asian and Latin American banking markets

In this paper we examine the impact of foreign bank penetration on the competitive structure of domestic banking sectors in host emerging economies. We focus our analysis on Asia and Latin America during the period 1997-2008. Using bank-level panel data to identify foreign banks and to estimate measures of banking competition, we are able to provide robust empirical evidence that an increase in foreign bank penetration enhances competition in these host countries’ banking sectors. We find that this positive foreign bank penetration and banking competition link is associated with a spillover effect from foreign banks to their domestic counterparts. This spillover effect becomes stronger when more efficient and less risky foreign banks enter into less concentrated host country markets. We also find that the spillover effect is greater when foreign banks enter in the form of ‘de novo penetration’ than through mergers or acquisitions of domestic banks (‘M&A penetration’).     

European Banking Integration: Don’t Put the Cart before the Horse

This paper reviews the progress in European banking integration over the last twenty years, and evaluates the current system of banking supervision and deposit insurance based on ‘home country’ control. The public policy implications to draw from the paper are threefold: First, after a relatively slow start, European banking integration is gaining momentum, in terms of cross‐border flows, market share of foreign banks in several domestic markets, and cross‐border M&As of significant size. If this trend continues, the issue of adequate supervision and safety nets in an integrated European banking market will become even more pressing. Second, although until recently banks have relied mostly on subsidiary structures to go cross‐border, this is changing with the recent creation of the European company statute, which facilitates cross‐border branch banking. A review of the case of the Scandinavian bank, Nordea Bank AB, helps to understand some remaining barriers to integration, and the supervisory issues raised by branch banking. Third, it is argued that the principle of ‘home country’ supervision is unlikely to be adequate in the future for large international banks. Because the closure of an international bank would be likely to have cross‐border spillovers, and because some small European countries might be unable to finance the bail‐out of their very large banks, centralization, or at least Europe‐wide coordination, of the decision to close or bail‐out international banks is needed. This raises the issue of European funding of bail‐out costs, European banking supervision, and European deposit insurance.     

Recent trends in international banking

The paper defines ‘international banking’ more as a geographical expression than as a particular type of activity and points out that the internationalization of the world's major banking systems was in many cases an evolutionary phenomenon governed by market or institutional developments. It analyses both the development of international banking structures, stressing the process that brought banks to prefer international retail activity rather than wholesale, and the relationship between domestic and international banking. Finally, the paper deals with the not easy to resolve problem of the establishment of lender of last resort facilities in international banking.     

Market concentration and bank competition in emerging asian countries over pre and post the 2008 global financial crisis

This paper examines the relationships between market concentration, bank competition, and efficiency in banking across six emerging Asian countries namely Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam over the period 2005 to 2012. The countries selected for this study operate commercial banking activities with a comparatively large number of both publicly listed and private commercial banks providing a broad range of commercial banking services. For example, banks in Bangladesh, India and Vietnam used to be predominantly state-owned. But over the last few decades, governments have been issuing licenses to private owners. The methodological approach taken by our study provides an important and original contribution to the extant literature by testing various hypothesis that investigate the relationship between competition and efficiency across banks from a select group of Asian countries. We find that market concentration has a positive effect whereas competition has a negative effect on the efficiency of banks operating in these countries. This finding conveys a critically important message to the regulators of banks in these countries: there is a trade-off between quantity and quality. Our analyses also reveal that the effect of bank size on efficiency is positive whereas the effect of liquidity risk on efficiency is negative. This again supports the conventional wisdom that large banks are in a position to provide cost efficient services because they have the ability to attain economies of scale and scopes. Here again, the regulators have very important roles to play: while they have to put in place effective mechanism preventing big banks from being an oligarchy; at the same time, they should make sure that banks get liquidity support as funding pressure builds up.     

What do bank acquirers want? Evidence from worldwide bank M&A targets

What drives bankers to create larger and larger, often multinational banking groups? In this paper we investigate whether the targets in cross-border bank M&As are materially different from those banks targeted in domestic M&A deals. The main message of this paper is that, with few exceptions, domestic and foreign investors target similar banks. In particular, and contrary to what one might expect, bank size does not have a different effect on the probability of being a domestic or a cross-border target, instead it has a positive and highly significant effect in both cases. We find that the main differences between national and international M&As are the characteristics of the countries where the banks operate.     

Market structure and competitive conditions in the Arab GCC banking system

This paper investigates the market structure of Arab GCC banking industry during the years of 1993–2002 using the most frequently applied measures of concentration k-bank concentration ratio (CRk) and Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and evaluates the monopoly power of banks over the ten years period using the ‘H-statistic’ by Panzar and Rosse. The results show that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE have moderately concentrated markets and are moving to less concentrated positions. The measures of concentration also show that Qatar, Bahrain and Oman are highly concentrated markets. The Panzar–Rosse H-statistics suggest that banks in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE operate under perfect competition; banks in Bahrain and Qatar operate under conditions of monopolistic competition; and we are unable to reject monopolistic competition for the banking market in Oman.     

The International Bank Lending Channel of Monetary Policy Rates and QE: Credit Supply,Reach‐for‐Yield,and Real Effects

We identify the international credit channel by exploiting Mexican supervisory data sets and foreign monetary policy shocks in a country with a large presence of European and U.S. banks. A softening of foreign monetary policy expands credit supply of foreign banks (e.g., U.K. policy affects credit supply in Mexico via U.K. banks), inducing strong firm‐level real effects. Results support an international risk‐taking channel and spillovers of core countries’ monetary policies to emerging markets, both in the foreign monetary softening part (with higher credit and liquidity risk‐taking by foreign banks) and in the tightening part (with negative local firm‐level real effects).     

外资银行进入中国决定因素的实证研究

本文运用1996--2009年的面板数据,以外资银行在华营业性机构数量为因变量,从外资银行母吲的宏观因素、东道国的制度因素和母国与东道同的联系三个方面检验外资银行进入中国市场的影响因素？结果显示,外资银行进入程度与母国的经济发展水平、母同对中国的FDI、母国与中国的双边贸易量呈正相关父系,与两国的地理距离呈负相关关系,而与母同银行业的存贷利差没有显著关系,并且,2006年底我国对银行业的开放政策显著地促进了外资银行的进入。     

Financial services in an increasingly integrated global financial market

This paper discusses aspects of global financial services. As part of financial globalisation, financial institutions have evolved both nationally and internationally. FDI is becoming an important vehicle for multinational banks to enter developing countries. This in turn is changing the composition of trade in financial services. The experience of regional integration in Europe and the emergence of large multinational European banks signal a new era of global competition and consolidation of financial institutions. Home bias in international financial services is much less where financial integration is taking place. With financial globalisation, one should expect more diversification of ownership of multinational banks around the world, particularly when China and India are now able to have strategic investment in some of the key investment banks around the world. Financial globalisation requires stronger and more effective international institutions as a way of monitoring the activities of multinational financial institutions at both the national and international levels.