Suchergebnisse

The increase in the concentration of the banking industry across European
Union countries during the last fifteen years can be explained in terms of:
a) global factors, like the comprehensive adoption of technological
innovations, the intensification of competition that has resulted from the
deregulation of the financial sector and, more recently, as a consequence of
the government interventions and forced acquisitions prompted by the
2007-2009 financial crisis; and, b) factors that have been specific to the
E.U., in particular, the structural changes that took place in the region as
a result of the creation of the Single Financial Market (1993) and the
introduction of the euro (1999). This work analyzes the concentration process
of the banking industry in the E.U. during the last fifteen years giving
preeminence to the strategic choices made by the region?s commercial banks.
It also reports the most visible E.U. banks? M&As and government
interventions that resulted from the 2007-2009 financial crisis, make a
preliminary evaluation of the outcomes, and suggests possible future trends
for the banking industry in the region.

We estimate the long-run relationships among NAFTA capital market returns and
then calculate the weights of a ?time-varying minimum variance portfolio?
that includes the Canadian, Mexican, and USA capital markets between March
2007 and March 2009, a period of intense turbulence in international markets.
Our results suggest that the behavior of NAFTA market investors is not
consistent with that of a theoretical ?risk-averse? agent during periods of
high uncertainty and may be either considered as irrational or attributed to
a possible ?home country bias?. This finding represents valuable information
for portfolio managers and contributes to a better understanding of the
nature of the markets in which they invest. It also has practical
implications in the design of international portfolio investment policies.