Since August 1998, Russia has been suffering from a severe banking crisis. In finding a solution, two peculiarities of the Russian economy need to be taken into account: the substantial foreign liabilities of commercial banks and the failure of the government to service its liabilities. Apart...

Although domestic mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the financial services industry have increased steadily over the past two decades, international M&As were relatively rare until recently. This paper uses a novel dataset of over 2,300 mergers that took place between 1978 and 2001 to analyse...

Information costs and regulatory barriers are the main distinguishing features of international financial markets as compared to national financial markets. This paper presents a simple model of the impact of these factors on banks' cross-border activities and provides empirical evidence. Our...

We draw on a new data set on the use of Swiss francs and other currencies by European banks to assess the patterns of foreign currency bank lending. We show that the patterns differ sharply across foreign currencies. The Swiss franc is used predominantly for lending to residents, especially...

The German banking market is notorious for its low degree of market penetration by foreign financial institutions, suggesting that markets serviced by domestic and foreign banks are segmented. This paper employs a number of tests to determine whether activities of domestic and foreign banks are...

If the technological revolution which has taken place over the past decades has lowered information costs and if information costs increase in distance, distance should - ceteris paribus - become less important in determining international bank lending. We are using a dataset on assets and...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the determinants of foreign activities of German banks. We use regionally disaggregated panel data for the years 1981-98 and distinguish foreign direct investment from total foreign assets of domestic banks, of their foreign branches and their...

The German financial system is characterized by lower degrees of penetration by foreign commercial banks and of (bank) disintermedation than, for instance, that of the United States. These differences between the two countries could be attributed to the fact that universal banking in Germany...

International activities of commercial banks are a potential source for the transmission of shocks across countries. In Europe, bank finance plays a relatively important role, and efforts have been made at creating a level playing field for financial institutions. This paper reviews the stylized...

Changes in foreign asset holdings are one channel through which agents adjust to macroeconomic shocks. In this paper, we test whether foreign bank assets change as a result of domestic and foreign macroeconomic shocks. We frame our empirical analysis in a standard new open economy macro model in...