In this paper, we investigate the claim that German banks are special compared to banks in other industrialised economies. We show that banks are of particular importance to the German economy?as financial intermediary, as lender to the corporate sector, and as part of the corporate governance...

In den 1990er Jahren haben im deutschen und französischen Kreditgewerbe Restukturierungsempfehlungen international agierender Unternehmensberatungen Konjunktur. Der wohl prominenteste dieser Managementansätze firmiert unter der Bezeichnung Lean Banking und basiert auf einer vermeintlich...

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...

Initiated by the seminal work of Diamond/Dybvig (1983) and Diamond (1984), advances in the theory of financial intermediation have sharpened our understanding of the theoretical foundations of banks as special financial institutions. What makes them unique is the combination of accepting...