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This study analyzes the role of regional cooperative banks in identifying and financing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from a proximity perspective. Access to finance is a major challenge for SMEs. Regional cooperative banks can remove this barrier based on cooperative bank's characteristics and geographic proximity to SMEs. Understanding the interplay between these financial actors and firms can contribute to a better support of SMEs development.

The results are based on a case study of eight SMEs located in southwestern France. Interviews were conducted with two regional cooperative funds and eight SMEs. The interview guide included questions related to the company, the projects financed and how financing was accessed.

Results reveal that a combination of three forms of proximity allows regional cooperative banks and SMEs to establish effective financing operations. They show that regional cooperative banks are key players in the existing financing mechanisms for SMEs. Such financing is often used to gain access to larger players at a later stage. The findings suggest the need for public policies that promote the integration of financing actors in regional ecosystems to advance SMEs' development.

This article examines how SMEs access financing, with a focus on regional cooperative banks, which have received little attention in the literature. Moreover, the relationships between these actors are studied through the lens of proximity. Regional cooperative banks are able to finance projects that may have been overlooked by traditional banks due to trust-building local dynamics.

Japanese regional banks have actively expanded their overseas business in emerging markets, and this topic is quite important for regional banks that have confronted severe business environments over the decades. An aging population suppresses long-term increases in loan demands, and stagnant economic conditions lead to lowered interest rates in the medium-term. Overseas business is a promising business field for regional banks, but recent developments have not been investigated in detail.

This chapter examines overseas investments using data from regional banks’ financial reports. Our sample comprises 44 regional banks without overseas branches, and a research period from FY2011 to FY2015. We demonstrate different overseas business patterns among regional banks. This investigation uses X-means clustering, which is nonhierarchical, as this method automatically presents an optimal number of clusters, and sorts regional banks into their appropriate clusters.

The X-means clustering method indicates five business patterns among regional banks. This also characterizes respective clusters and demonstrates that medium-sized banks actively develop security investments, which increases overseas business’s contributions to profits. Meanwhile, small banks cannot expand overseas investments, which differ from other banks. These banks must seek other business models to compensate for this decline in their earning power.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether branch expansions have realized efficiency gains by focussing on regional banks in Japan.

The authors use a single-step estimation procedure, where both cost frontier parameters and inefficiency effects are addressed simultaneously, and examine the impact of expanding branch networks on bank performance.

The findings show that regional banks expanding their branch networks to certain levels exhibit lower cost inefficiencies. Robustness results are also obtained from the samples, excluding the regional banks located in urban regions.

The findings suggest that adequate levels of branch expansion have beneficial impacts for regional banks, although this result is contrary to the current region-based relationship banking policy promoted by Japan’s financial regulators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether community banks have gained market share at the expense of larger, regional banks in small metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The authors also seek to examine market share gains of community banks relative to each other.

The empirical research is conducted using deposit and market share data for community and regional banks between 2001 and 2008. The authors employ regression analysis.

It is found that community banks have gained market share. When regional banks are excluded and the market share gains of community banks relative to each other examined it is found that community banks with lower market shares gain relative to banks with a larger initial share of the deposit market.

Research is conducted using eight metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Thus, conclusions drawn are based on analysis conducted in one region of the United States.

The paper's findings are in contrast to traditional thinking about size and market share and suggest that community bank managers should focus on each other as well as regional and mega‐bank competitors.

The paper uses market share as a proxy for bank size as a means of explaining the competitive landscape that exists within community banking.

To examine whether Japanese commercial banks exhibited economies of scale and economies of density at the time when the mega‐merger wave in Japanese banking began in the late 1990s. Since this merger wave has not yielded efficiencies, this analysis aims to shed light on whether banks, at the start of the wave, had reason to believe that larger banks would be more efficient.

Using a modified version of the translog cost function, the analysis estimates economies of scale and economies of density for Japanese city banks, trust banks, and regional banks. Then, the relationship between size and economies of scale/density and that between profitability and scale/density are explored using regression analysis.

Results suggest that larger banks (as measured by value of assets/loans/ deposits/investments, and number of employees/branches) were more likely to be in the decreasing/constant returns to scale/density region than smaller banks, The finding was statistically significant for all three types of Japanese banks. On average, city banks exhibited diseconomies of scale/density; trust banks exhibited constant returns to scale and increasing returns to density, and regional banks exhibited increasing returns to scale and density. This suggests that unions between city banks and either regional banks or trust banks may have been more likely to yield cost‐efficiencies, and raises questions concerning the efficiency motivations of the mega‐bank mergers. The findings further indicate that banks with higher sales were more likely to have exploited scale/density efficiencies, and that banks with higher net incomes were more likely to be in the increasing returns region.

This paper suggests that the mega‐merger wave in Japan in the late 1990s may not have been motivated by a desire for greater efficiencies through utilization of under‐utilized branch networks. Unlike other studies, this analysis differentiates between economies of scale and economies of density.

Uses survey data to examine the nature of bank lending decisions at the local branch and regional office level. In doing so considers which firm and loan characteristics explicitly affect the nature of the lending contract. The results show the smallest firms, whose lending decisions are made at local branches, face slightly higher borrowing costs, yet this is offset by the reduced likelihood of collateral being requested. Further, suggests that the high degree of control aversion exhibited by such firms acts in a detrimental way by negating many of the obvious benefits of a localized banking relationship. On interest rate margins, presents clear evidence supporting credibility and legitimacy theories, with legal status and a lengthy track record reducing margins significantly. Regarding security levels, the results suggest that local branch banks have particularly short‐term lending horizons. The penalty in terms of collateral requirements on medium‐ to long‐term loans appear quite severe. This issue needs to be addressed to ensure that small firms in the UK receive the lower cost, longer‐term finance that would facilitate the structural growth of this sector.

The idea that a bank's overall performance is influenced by the regional economy in which it operates is intuitive and broadly consistent with historical bank performance. Yet, micro-level research on the topic has borne mixed results, failing to find a consistent link between various measures of bank performance and regional economic variables. This chapter attempts to reconcile the intuition with the micro-level data by aggregating bank performance, as measured by nonperforming loans, up to the state level. This level of aggregation reduces the influence of idiosyncratic bank effects sufficiently so as to examine more clearly the influence of state-level economic variables. We show that regional variables, such as employment growth and changes in real estate prices, are not particularly useful for predicting changes in bank performance, but that coincident indicators developed to track a state's gross output are quite useful. We find that these coincident indicators have a statistically significant and economically important influence on state-level, aggregate bank performance. In addition, the coincident indicators potentially contribute to the out-of-sample forecasts of the relative riskiness of state-level bank portfolios, which should be of interest to bankers and bank supervisors.

This study aims to provide additional insights by further investigating the governance aspects including board composition, risk monitoring and management by the board, ownership structures as well as the incentive compensation.

This study investigates the relationships between corporate governance, risk-taking behaviors and default risk by analyzing 78 publicly listed Japanese regional banks during the 2007-2008 crisis period.

Banks that were more diversified in the run-up to the crisis were associated with higher default risk during the crisis. Foreign shareholders may have prompted banks to engage in higher risk-taking activities in pursuit of higher returns, putting banks at a higher risk of default. On the other hand, board-level risk management committees may have mitigated the risks to protect firms from rising default. Finally, banks perceived to have better quality accounting information, by being audited by one of the Big 4 auditors, benefitted by mitigating price misevaluation and thus reducing default risk during the crisis.

Different from the majority of previous related studies on the relationship between governance and performance of stock returns, the current study focuses on the relationship between governance and default risk during the crisis which has a more direct link through which governance practices can affect risk-taking behaviors and thus the default risk during the crisis. In addition to examining conventional governance aspects, this study also focuses on the more relevant aspects of banks’ risk monitoring functions.

This paper examines the effect of both de jure and de facto measures of financial integration on bank profitability in five regional economic communities of Africa.

Using panel data from 405 banks operating in 47 African countries across five regional economic communities over 2007–2014, the study constructs a composite measure of bank profitability. The study then employs the dynamic two-step system GMM estimation technique to test the effect of both de jure and de facto measures of financial integration on bank profitability in Africa and across five sub-regional markets.

Overall, the results support a positive relationship between financial integration and overall bank profitability in Africa, except for the Arab Maghreb Union and Southern Africa Development Community.

The findings of this study suggest that increased financial integration in Africa directly improves bank’s overall profitability and the variations among the sub-regional markets inform tailored policy initiatives.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study on Africa to employ a composite measure of bank profitability to assess its determinants. It is also the first to include both de facto and de jure financial integration measures in a single study. This is also the first largest comparative study on bank profitability in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of institutional developments – market economy, financial deepening, private sector, property rights and rule of law – affecting the bank efficiency in China.

First, profit efficiency and cost efficiency scores of banks at the firm‐year level were estimated using a stochastic efficiency frontier approach. Then the results were aggregated at the regional level. Regional differences in the timing and extent of the institutional developments impacting bank efficiency were exploited.

It was observed that most institutional variables play an important role in affecting bank efficiency and additionally banks tend to operate more efficiently in those regions with greater presence of private sector and more property rights awareness.

The data on a number of important institutional variables such as property rights and rule of law are not easily available or importantly do not vary that much across years. However, based on whatever information available, it is apparent that institutional development is crucial to bank performance and also eventual economic growth.

This paper is believed to be the first attempt to empirically examine the role of institutional factor affecting bank efficiency especially in a transition country.