The Impact of Bank Consolidation on Commercial Borrower Welfare Jason Karceski University of Florida
[email protected] Steven Ongena Tilburg University and CentER
[email protected] ∗ David C. Smith Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
[email protected] November 2002 ∗ Corresponding author. Business phone: (202) 452-3827. Fax: (202) 452-6424. Mailing address: 20th and C Streets NW, Mailstop 19, Washington, D.C. 20551. The views of this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or of any other person associated with the Federal Reserve System. We thank Hans Degryse, Mark Flannery, Dale Henderson, Michael Ryngaert, Marc Zenner, and workshop participants at the 2000 CEPR Summer Conference, Norwegian School of Management BI, and Tilburg University for providing helpful comments. Ongena received partial support for this research from the Fund for Economic Research at Norges Bank. The Impact of Bank Consolidation on Commercial Borrower Welfare Abstract We estimate the impact of bank merger announcements on borrowers’ stock prices for publicly- traded Norwegian firms. In addition, we analyze how bank mergers influence borrower relationship termination behavior and relate changes in the propensity to terminate to borrower abnormal returns. We demonstrate that borrowers lose, on average, about 0.76 percent in equity value when their bank is announced as a merger target. Small borrowers of target banks are especially hurt in mergers involving two large banks, where they lose an average of about 1.8 percent.