The Barings, Daiwa Bank and Sumitomo Corp. financial debacles in the mid-1990s suggest that management failures rather than misfortune, errors, or complexity are a major source of the risk of financial debacles. These errors are systematic and are a concommittant of the structure of trading and...

Why are there such severe problems in lending in the transition countries? This research took a microeconomic and institutional look at part of the problem. We conducted interviews in Bulgaria and Hungary and sought answers to two questions. First, how do banks making "normal" loans insure that...

Singapore's "Big 4" banks, plus the newly merged Keppel TatLee Bank, have offices throughout the Asia-Pacific area, in London and North America as well and are also acquiring banks in Asia. Several factors have been particularly salient in explaining the timing and location of their expansion:...

Lottery-linked deposit accounts have proved to be popular around the world. From the point of view of a bank, these products are especially successful among relatively low-income customers, or in markets in which many people are outside the banking system. Below, we describe numerous examples of...

Banks have been engaging in foreign direct investment (FDI) for over 150 years. In doing so, they have had to deal with the problems of the liability of foreignness, generally without being able to depend on proprietary administrative or physical technology. Foreign direct investment in banking...

Foreign banks have had an organizational presence in the United States since the early 1800s. Until after World War II, the foreign banks' presence was generally limited. They engaged in trade finance, and in some cases ethnic banking. The growth really dates to the period from the mid-1960s to...

Foreign banks now dominate retail banking in the territories, commonwealths, and nations of the Pacific Islands. Generally, banking is highly concentrated, with two Australian banks dominating the Australian sphere of influence, and three French banks dominating the French sphere. The situation...

We discuss the expansion of Norwegian banks abroad in the post-World War II era. The Norwegian case gives us an opportunity to examine the determinants of the strategies that banks from a small county have followed in their international expansion. At least two issues emerge as important. The...