Mergers and Acquisitions in the Spanish Banking Industry: some Empirical Evidence.

Since the late eighties, the Spanish banking system has been undergoing major changes that have affected both its structure and the nature of strategic interaction among banking institutions. Various different strategies have been adopted to tackle the deamds of this new operating environment, one such strategy having been consolidation via mergers and acquisitions. This paper attempts to provide some empirical evidence on the impact of the consolidation process on the monetary transmission mechanism, the degree of competition in banking markets and the performance of banking institutions.