competitive success of the economy, and help to create new jobs. Bank financing is the most important source of external credit … for newly established firms. In the last two decades, bank consolidation and regulatory changes such as Basel II have …. Especially in the high-tech sector, a large share of young firms has reported difficulties in obtaining bank loans. For this …

It is well recognized that relationship banking helps to relieve the credit constraints faced by SMEs to access bank … social capital factors, and the styleof the bank-borrowerrelationship. Along with bank, firm, and market factors, trust …

Assessing the impacts of bank mergers on small firms requires separating borrowers with single versus multiple banking …-relationship borrowers who "switch" to another bank following a merger will be less harmed than those whose relationship is "dropped" and not … to be dropped. We track post-merger performance and show that many dropped target-bank borrowers are harmed by the merger …