The advent of the euro has eroded many of the barriers that segmented the European corporate bond market along currency lines and given rise to a unified market comparable in size to the one denominated in US dollars. In doing so, the new currency has made it easier for investment banks to...

This paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of mixing banking and commerce, using the quot;liquidityquot; approach to financial intermediation. Bringing a nonfinancial firm into a banking conglomerate may be advantageous because it may make it easier for the bank to dispose of assets...

This paper brings together two seemingly unrelated branches of the literature that focuses on different aspects of a bank's interaction with its borrowers: the relative priority of bank debt, and the role of banks as quot;relationship lendersquot;. Specifically, we show that bank seniority plays...