Bank Acquisitiveness and Bailouts: Evidence on European Banks during the 2008 Financial Crisis

Saqib Aziz (1) , Jean-Jacques Lilti (2) , Khalid Elbadraoui (3, 4)

1 ESC Rennes School of Business
2 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management
3 Université Ibn Zohr [Agadir]
4 ENCGT - Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion de Tanger

Bank bailouts perhaps share the list of the most widely discussed topics during the debate over the 2008 financial crisis. Banks that were termed strong were trapped in the financial distress in a very short time span and subscribed to the hefty bailouts to come out of this turmoil. It is argued that banks pursue mergers and acquisitions (M&A afterward) strategies to increase their size, which potentially increases their “too-big-to-fail” (TBTF henceforth), associated benefits. Prior to the recent financial crisis, M&A activity facilitated the emergence of few large and structurally complex banking institutions (Weiß et al., 2014) while spearheading a significant phase of consolidation in the banking industry (De Young et al., 2009). This paper investigates whether and how the acquisitiveness of large European banks in the period before crisis relate with their bailout support during the 2008 financial crisis.

Mots clés: 2008 financial crisis; Bank Acquisitiveness

Domaines: Economies et finances

Saqib Aziz, Jean-Jacques Lilti, Khalid Elbadraoui. Bank Acquisitiveness and Bailouts: Evidence on European Banks during the 2008 Financial Crisis. Bankers Markets & Investors : an academic & professional review, 2017, 149, pp.40-61. ⟨halshs-01717978⟩