This paper investigates the motive of geographic risk diversification in the lending activity for bank mergers in the EU on a sample of large banking groups. Geographic diversification should allow banks to reduce their risk. We observe that the loan portfolios of European banks are home-biased....

With the increasing domination of foreign capital in banking sectors of transition countries, it is of the highest interest to investigate the relative performance of domestic-owned and foreign-owned banks in these countries. We therefore aim here to compare the technical efficiency of...

This paper aims at providing theoretical foundations to the role of customer relationship as a strategic barrier to entry on banking markets. A bank which grants a loan to a customer gains a comparative advantage in information on this customer as compared with competitors. This informational...