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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on minority-owned commercial banks in the USA.

The authors examine performance differences between African-American (AA) commercial banks and other minority (OM)-owned banks. Also, the authors compare AA bank performance with that of their peer-group banking institutions.

Employing data both before and after the recessionary period of 2008-2009, the authors find significant performance differences between minority ownership categories. For example, prior to 2008, AA banks held a significant advantage over OM-owned banks in net interest income as a percentage of average assets. This competitive advantage was somewhat offset by relatively weak loan portfolios and failure to contain costs. The 2008 crisis served to exacerbate the negatives of African-American banks while their positive differences essentially disappeared.

The focus is different than the previous studies on minority-owned banks. The authors are especially interested in how AA banks have fared – relative to banking industry peer institutions, but also, relative to OM-owned banks.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the two diversification strategies on firms' propensity to save cash out of cash flow.

The author examines the quarterly data of Compustat's active and research firms from the first quarter of 1999 to the last quarter of 2005, with a sample size of more than 79,000 firm quarters. A two‐step GMM Instrumental Variable regression of change in cash holdings, on variables that measure the degree of industrial as well as international diversification strategies, is employed to investigate whether each diversification strategy alleviates or exacerbates firm's propensity to save cash out of its cash flows.

Evidence is found that industrial diversification mitigates the propensity of firms to save cash out of their cash flows. When the sample is partitioned into financially constrained and financially non‐constrained firms, industrial diversification reduces propensity of firms to save cash out of cash flows for financially constrained firms but not for financially non‐constrained firms. On the other hand, the results do not indicate any impact of international diversification on the sensitivity of cash to cash flows.

The paper tests, empirically, whether international and industrial diversification strategies affect the propensity of firms to save cash out of their cash flow.