Foreign banks’ attraction to the financial centre Frankfurt : a "u"-shaped relationship

This paper traces the location of foreign banks in Germany from 1949 to 2006. As suggested by new economic geography models we find a ‘u’-shaped concentration of foreign banks in Germany. Only after a competition between several cities, Frankfurt has emerged as the pre-eminent financial centre, triggered by the ‘historical event’ of setting up the German central bank in Frankfurt. After a strong increase, Frankfurt’s share in the location of foreign banks in Germany decreases slowly but significantly since the mid 1980’s. We conclude that there will be a lesser role in Europe for secondtier financial centres in the future

Frankfurt - an emerging international financial centre

Characterised as the mighty capital of the eurozone (Sassen 1999, 83), Frankfurt is said to be a rising world city primarily due to its financial centre. This is reflected in the use of such common catchphrases as Bankfurt and Mainhattan for the city, as well as its reference in scientific publications. As Ronneberger and Keil (1995, 305) state, for instance, a service economy [...] mastered by the finance sector forms the basis for the continuing integration of Frankfurt into the international market. Frankfurt is the most important German as well as European financial centres. Thirteen of the 30 largest German banks and about two thirds of Germany s foreign banks are seated here. Frankfurt s stock exchange (ranked 4th in the world) is by far the biggest in Germany with a turnover-share of more than 80%. Its derivatives exchange (Eurex) aims to become the biggest in the world. As the host city for the European Central Bank, it is also the centre of European monetary policy. As a major node in the global financial network today, Frankfurt s specific functions within this network will be investigated in this paper. Unlike most other predominant national financial centres, Frankfurt has not continuously held this position in Germany s since the middle ages: It re-gained it s position from Berlin only after World War II. In contrast to the static phenomenon financial centre which is well covered in the literature emergence and development of financial centres is not as well understood. The study of the development of the financial centre Frankfurt after World War II gives insights into the dynamics of the self-reinforcing mechanisms within financial centres; the second topic covered in the paper. The paper is organised as follows: the remainder of this chapter looks at the method used in this study and the theory of financial centres with an emphasis on the basic approaches to the emergence of financial centres. After that it is asked whether Frankfurt meets the basic requirements for the concept of path dependence, i.e. that there are self-reinforcing mechanisms. After a positive answer to that, the development of Frankfurt as a financial centre is discussed as well as its role as a node in the world (financial) system today in chapter two. Chapter three provides some more or less speculative remarks about Frankfurt s future; the last chapter briefly summarises the findings of the paper

Acquiring foreign firms far away might be hazardous to your share price: evidence from Germany

This paper examines shareholder wealth effects of cross-border acquisitions. In a sample of 155 large acquisitions by German corporations from 1985–2006 international transactions in total do not lead to significant announcement returns. Geography, however, makes a difference: Shareholders of acquiring firms gain 6.5% in cross-border transactions into countries that have a common border with Germany but lose 4.4% in other international transactions. We find proximity to be one of the most important success factors in cross-border mergers and acquisitions, even when we control for firm, deal and country characteristics

Home biased? : A spatial analysis of the domestic merging behavior of US firms

Using data of US domestic mergers and acquisitions transactions, this paper shows that acquirers have a preference for geographically proximate target companies. We measure the ‘home bias’ against benchmark portfolios of hypothetical deals where the potential targets consist of firms of similar size in the same four-digit SIC code that have been targets in other transactions at about the same time or firms that have been listed at a stock exchange at that time. There is a strong and consistent home bias for M&A transactions in the US, which is significantly declining during the observation period, i.e. between 1990 and 2004. At the same time, the average distances between target and acquirer increase articulately. The home bias is stronger for small and relatively opaque target companies suggesting that local information is the decisive factor in explaining the results. Acquirers that diversify into new business lines also display a stronger preference for more proximate targets. With an event study we show that investors react relatively better to proximate acquisitions than to distant ones. That reaction is more important and becomes significant in times when the average distance between target and acquirer becomes larger, but never becomes economically significant. We interpret this as evidence for the familiarity hypothesis brought forward by Huberman (2001): Acquirers know about the existence of proximate targets and are more likely to merge with them without necessarily being better informed. However, when comparing the best and the worst deals, we are able to show a dramatic difference in distances and home bias: The most successful deals display on average a much stronger home bias and distinctively smaller distance between acquirer and target than the least successful deals. Proximity in M&A transactions therefore is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. The paper contributes to the growing literature on the role of distance in financial decisions

Analysis of marketing systems on traditional bananas and plantains in Peru

Poster presented at Tropentag 2011 - Development on the Margin. Bonn (Germany), 3-7 Oct 2011

Beam Threading in the LHC

Particles circulating in the LHC will experience a considerable amount of nonlinear magnetic forces, in particular at injection. Therefore it is important to show that a first circulating beam can be achieved at all, albeit in successive steps of measurement and correction. This has been done in simulation using a realistic model of the LHC which includes all estimated magnet alignment and field e rrors. The automatic procedure is based on pickups and corrector magnets. The results of this study have influenced the choice of the pickup system for the LHC. In particular, they show that a suffici ently smooth initial trajectory can be achieved even with a certain percentage of "dead" pickups

Self-Consistent Orbits with Beam-Beam Effect in the LHC

In part of the straight sections of the LHC the two beams share a common beam tube. Therefore the bunches cross each other not only at the interaction point, but as well at many places on either side, with a typical transverse separation of 10 times the transverse beam size. These parasitic encounters lead to orbit distortions and tune shifts, in addition to higher order effects. Since the string of bunches from the injection machine contains gaps, not all possible 3564 buckets around the machine are filled, but only about 3000. This in turn causes some bunches to not always encounter bunches in the opposite beam at one or several parasitic collision points (so-called pacman bunches), or even at the head-on interaction point (super-pacman bunches). With a special program self-consistent orbits in the LHC have been calculated for the first time with the full beam-beam collision scheme resulting from various injection scenarios. The offsets at the interaction points, and the tune shifts are shown to be small enough to be easily controlled

The GEO 600 status

The British–German gravitational wave detector GEO 600 has concluded a long observational period called Astrowatch, which lasted from November 2007 to July 2009. Together with the LIGO-H2 detector, GEO 600 was kept observing, while other detectors of the world-wide network of laser-interferometers like LIGO(L1 and H1) and Virgo were upgraded. A fraction of the time during the astrowatch period was set apart for noise investigations and experiments preparing future upgrades. Even with these investigations GEO 600 reached an observation time of 86.0% of the overall time, such that a total of 522 days worth of data were collected. The average sensitivity was roughly a factor of 2 lower than that of the LIGO-H2 detector for frequencies above 500 Hz. In July 2009 GEO 600 has started an upgrade program called GEO-HF. Within this program we aim at improving the sensitivity by a number of sequential upgrades, like tuned signal recycling, DC readout, output mode-cleaning, injection of squeezed vacuum states and the increase of circulating light power. Tuned signal recycling and DC readout have already been implemented and can be operated robustly, due to a new technique associated with the automatic alignment system

The status of GEO 600

The GEO 600 gravitational wave detector located near Hannover in Germany is part of the LSC network of gravitational wave observatories. Since January 2006 the GEO 600 detector has participated in the S5 LSC science run and acquired sensitive and well-characterized science data with a high duty cycle. Until 1 October 2007, 415 days of science data with an average peak sensitivity of better than 3 × 10-22 Hz-1/2 have been collected. In this paper, we give a brief overview of GEO 600 and describe activities in the period between January 2006 and October 2007. Plans for the near and medium future are briefly discussed