Banks beyond borders: internationalization, financialization, and the behavior of foreign-owned banks during the Global Financial Crisis

An internationalizing wave swept through many developing and emerging countries’ banking systems in the years before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008. Early critics of the influx of foreign banks worried that local affiliates of international behemoths could serve key nodes for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTheory and society Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 307 - 333
Main Author Nelson, Stephen C.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.03.2020
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Aftermath
Banking
Banking system
Borders
Communism
Control systems
Developing countries
Economic crisis
Eruption
Foreign banks
Global economy
Globalization
International finance
LDCs
Ownership
Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Postcommunist societies
Regional variations
Regulation of financial institutions
Social Sciences
Sociology
Latin America
Foreign-owned banks
Financial regulation
Global financial crisis
Post-communist Europe
Financialization of banking
Latin America
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Summary:An internationalizing wave swept through many developing and emerging countries’ banking systems in the years before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008. Early critics of the influx of foreign banks worried that local affiliates of international behemoths could serve key nodes for transmitting turbulent conditions in the global financial hubs to the peripheries of the world economy. The eruption of the GFC and its aftermath, it would appear, decisively settled the dispute over the merits of foreign control of national banking systems in the critics’ favor. Yet the simple foreign/domestic ownership distinction cannot answer the questions that animate this article: why did foreign-owned banks play an amplifying role during the crisis in one region (post-communist Central and Eastern Europe) but not in another (Central and South America)? What accounts for the difference in how foreign-owned banks responded to a common financial shock across the two regions? I argue that financialization of banking systems in the post-communist European group of countries is a key mediating factor that explains why the heavy foreign bank presence in the region amplified the regional effects of the global credit crunch in 2008 and the years that followed.
ISSN:0304-2421
1573-7853
DOI:10.1007/s11186-020-09381-6