Ownership and competition in the banking sector are policy concerns around the world that are rarely comprehensively examined. For 131 countries and 13 years we match bank ownership with over 50,000 bank-year estimates of individual bank market power. At the individual bank level, ownership does...

Does bank market power affect firm performance? We answer this question by examining 25,236 syndicated loan facilities granted between 2000 and 2010 by 296 banks to 9,029 US non-financial firms. Even though recently poorly-performing firms obtain loans from banks with more market power, we find...