available to banks in individual EU countries help to account for cross-border merger activity. The paper explains how this …

,300 mergers that took place between 1978 and 2001 to analyse the determinants of international bank mergers. We test the extent to … which information costs and regulations hold back merger activity. Our results suggest that banks operating in more … regulated environments are less likely to be the targets of international bank mergers. Hence, the lifting of regulations can …