Foreign Banks in Transition Economies: Small Business Lending and Internal Capital Markets

On the basis of focused interviews with managers of foreign parent banks and their affiliates in Central Europe and the Baltics, we analyse foreign banks’ small business lending and internal capital markets. This allows us to complement the standard empirical literature, which has difficulty in measuring important variables such as lending technologies and capital allocation systems. We find that the acquisition of local banks by foreign banks has not led to a persistent bias in these banks’ credit supply towards large multinational corporations. Instead, increased competition and the improvement of subsidiaries’ lending technologies have led foreign banks to gradually expand into the SME and retail markets. Second, we show that local bank affiliates are strongly influenced by the capital allocation and credit steering mechanisms of the parent bank. The credit growth of subsidiaries therefore potentially depends on the financial health of the foreign based parent bank.foreign banks, transition economies, small business lending, internal capital markets

Foreign banks in transition countries. To whom do they lend and how are they financed?

We use focused interviews with managers of foreign parent banks and their affiliates in Central Europe and the Baltic States to analyse the small-business lending and internal capital markets of multinational financial institutions. Our approach allows us to complement the standard empirical literature, which has difficulty in analysing important issues such as lending technologies and capital allocation. We find that the acquisition of local banks by foreign banks has not led to a persistent bias in these banks’ credit supply towards large multinational corporations. Instead, increased competition and the improvement of subsidiaries’ lending technologies have led foreign banks to gradually expand into the SME and retail markets. Second, it is demonstrated that local bank affiliates are strongly influenced by the capital allocation and credit steering mechanisms of the parent bank.foreign banks, transition economies, small-business lending, internal capital markets

Tax Transparency and Corporate Tax Avoidance

This analysis will look into the emerging global trend for increased tax transparency from large businesses and corporations. Tax transparency has been a growing topic globally and there has been some recent progress in several countries. This analysis will begin by looking into the motivation behind increasing the amount of transparency around a business’ tax affairs. After exploring some key driving factors, a few of the new major tax initiatives and the details encompassed in them will be discussed. The specific countries that will be focused on are the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Overall, this analysis is intended to be an unbiased look into the present developments occurring on how large businesses should deal with their tax affairs. It is apparent that the issue of tax transparency is being addressed in various ways in different countries, and barely addressed at all in some. The future of corporate tax transparency is unclear, but changes are being implemented today that must be followed in order to see their full impact in the future. This analysis will also briefly look into the impact that increasing tax transparency has had so far as well as possible speculations for the future

Entry Mode Choice of Multinational Banks

When expanding abroad, a multinational bank faces a trade-off between accessing a foreign country via cross border lending or a financial foreign direct investment, i.e. greenfield or acquisition entry. We analyze the entry mode choice of multinational banks and explicitly derive the entry mode pattern in the banking industry. Moreover, we show that in less developed banking markets, a trend towards cross border lending and acquisition entry exists. Greenfield entry prevails in more developed markets. Furthermore, we identify a tendency towards acquisition entry in small and towards greenfield entry in larger host countries

Taxation of multinational banks : using formulary apportionment to reflect economic reality

The taxation of multinational banks is currently governed by general principles of international tax. However, there are characteristics exclusive to multinational banks that may warrant consideration of a separate taxing regime, as the current system does not produce a result that accurately reflects the economic source of the income or the location of the economic activity. The suggested alternative is unitary taxation using global formulary apportionment

Banks’ Internationalization Strategies: The Role of Bank Capital Regulation

This paper studies how capital requirements influence a bank’s mode of entry into foreign financial markets. We develop a model of an internationally operating bank that creates and allocates liquidity across countries and argue that the advantage of multinational banking over offering cross-border financial services depends on the benefit and the cost of intimacy with local markets. The benefit is that it allows to create more liquidity. The cost is that it causes inefficiencies in internal capital markets, on which a multinational bank relies to allocate liquidity across countries. Capital requirements affect this trade-off by influencing the degree of inefficiency in internal capital markets.incomplete financial contracting, cross-border financial services, multinational banking, liquidity allocation, capital regulation

Cross-border Risk Transmission by a Multinational Bank

A model of international banking, with the stress on the specific management human capital (borrower monitoring) and the majority shareholder human capital (manager auditing) is used to study the effects of exogenous shocks in one country on credit creation in the other. I show that the presence of the two named categories of non-transferable skills in the banking technology reduces the role of the standard portfolio diversification motive for cross-border transmission of disturbances. At the same time, this bank-specific market friction creates a separate channel of shock propagation, a function of the bank shareholder and manager incentives. It can even happen that the exogenous shock impact on credit has a different sign in the “relationship“ as opposed to “arm’s length“ banking environment. This phenomenon, caused by the marginal effect of the manager human capital involvement in the bank operation, is present in the bank branches with relatively small loan volumes. When the loan volume is large, the direction of the manager-auditing bank reaction to shocks abroad is the same as that of an arm’s length lender.multinational bank; managerial effort; audit; credit; foreign shock

Cross-Border Lending Contagion in Multinational Banks

We study the interdependence of lending decisions in different country branches of a multinational bank. This is done both theoretically and empirically. First, we formulate a model of a bank that delegates the management of its foreign unit to a local manager with non-transferable skills. The bank differs from other international investors due to a liquidity threshold which induces a depositor run and a regulatory action if attained. Therefore, lending decisions are influenced by delegation and precautionary motives. We then show that these two phenomena create a separate channel of shock propagation, a function of bank shareholder and manager incentives. The workings of this channel can lead to either “contagionâ€, meaning parallel reactions of the loan volumes in both countries to the parent bank home country disturbance, or standard “diversificationâ€, when the reactions of a standard international portfolio optimizer within the two country units go in opposite directions. In particular, it can happen that the impact of an exogenous shock on credit has a different sign in the “relationship†as opposed to the “arm’s-length†banking environment. Second, we construct a large sample of multinational banks and their branches/subsidiaries and look for the presence of lending contagion by panel regression methods. We obtain mixed results concerning contagion depending on the parent bank home country and the host economy of cross-border penetration. While the majority of multinational banks behave in line with the contagion effect, more than one-third do not. In addition, the presence of contagion seems to be related to the geographical location of subsidiaries.Delegation, diversification, lending contagion, multinational bank, panel regression.

The timing of foreign direct investment under uncertainty: Evidence from the Spanish banking sector

This paper investigates the timing of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the banking sector. The importance of this issue would arise from the existence of differential benefits associated to be the first entrant in a foreign location. Nevertheless, when uncertainty is considered, the existence of some Ownership-Location-Internalization (OLI) advantages can make FDI less reversible and/or more delayable and therefore it may be optimal for the firm to delay the investment until the uncertainty is resolved. In this paper, the nature of OLI advantages in the banking sector has been examined in order to propose a prognostic model of the timing of foreign direct investment. The model is then tested for the Spanish case using duration analysis.OLI advantages, foreign banking entry, survival analysis

The impact of Kazakhstan accession to the World Trade Organization : a quantitative assessment

In this paper the authors use a computable general equilibrium model of the Kazakhstan economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which encompasses (1) improved market access; (2) Kazakhstan tariff reduction; (3) reduction of barriers against entry by multinational service providers; and (4) reform of local content and value-added tax policies confronting multinational firms in the oil sector. They assume that foreign direct investment in business services is necessary for multinationals to compete well with Kazakstan business services providers, but cross-border service provision is also present. The model incorporates productivity effects in both goods and services markets endogenously, through a Dixit-Stiglitz framework. The authors estimated the ad valorem equivalent of barriers to foreign direct investment based on detailed questionnaires completed by specialized research institutes in Kazakhstan. They estimate that Kazakhstan will gain about 6.7 percent of the value of Kazakhstan consumption in the medium run from WTO accession and up to 17.5 percent in the long run. They estimate that the largest gains to Kazakhstan will derive from liberalization of barriers against multinational service providers, but the other three elements of WTO accession that the authors model all contribute positively to the estimated gains. Piecemeal sensitivity analysis shows that qualitatively the results are robust, but there are four parameters in the model that significantly affect the estimated magnitude of the gains from WTO accession.Economic Theory&Research,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Free Trade,ICT Policy and Strategies,Investment and Investment Climate