This thesis consists of three chapters, two in banking and one in international finance. The first two chapters examine how bank business models and foreign ownership structures affect bank-firm lending relationships. In particular, the first chapter reveals that foreign banks can overcome their informational disadvantage and lend to the same clientele as domestic banks with asset-based lending, shorter maturities, and credit scoring models, while domestic banks rely on relationship lending. The second chapter presents empirical evidence that relationship lending serves as a liquidity insurance for firms in distress, tolerating temporary bad results, yet extracting rents in the long run. The last chapter provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Central and Eastern European equity markets from the mid-1990s until now and evaluates the value of investing in these markets for global investors
