Impact of Internationalization on Company Performance

Impact of Internationalization on Company Performance Increased deregulation, cross-border activities of non-financial companies and improved information communications technology led to an increased consolidation of financial institutions across borders. Commercial banking sector in particular, have witnessed tremendous amount of cross-border bank merger and acquisitions (MAs) deals throughout the recent years. While globalization has accelerated cross-border merger activities around the world, another global force recently has been creating a counterweight to cross-border deals. Concerns over nationalism, feelings of national security and protectionism have delayed several cross-border banking deals. Basically, MAs of these institutions results in Consolidation, Internationalization or Conglomeration. In this context, Consolidation: It is a result of more concentrated banking systems, smaller number of larger firms. Ex: Consolidation of Bank of New York and hMellon in 2007 in USA. Internationalization: It is evidenced by increasing number of banking and other financial institutions that operate across national borders. Ex: Citi Bank, HSBC etc., operating worldwide. Conglomeration: Larger number of financial groups whose activities combine those of bank and non-bank financial firms. Ex: State Bank of India combining other State Banks for various activities in its umbrella in India. Objective and Scope of the Project The objective of this project is to understand the concept of internationalization and observe strategic patterns undertaken by various banks and evaluate the way it affected the performance of the organization. In this process, we consider exploring the following areas with a case study of a Canadian or US bank along with our study. Introduction to Internationalization After a relatively quiet period in 2001/2002, international mergers and acquisitions have picked up again. Since the 2003 mergers between Bank of America and FleetBoston, and JP Morgan Chases acquisition of Bank One, speculations were fueled about comparable cross-border deals in the European banking market. JP Morgan Chase announced its purchase of London based Cazenove in October 2004, while Spanish Banco Santander bought British mortgage bank Abbey National for 12.5 billion euro in august 2004, the largest cross border acquisition since HSBC bought French CCF in 2001. On the other hand, restructuring also took place. Credit Suisse announced in December 2004 that it would absorb First Boston, its global investment bank, into the parent organization to revive profits. After barely four years, ING sold the largest part of its German bank BHF to Sal Oppenheim while expanding its Internet banking activities. These examples reflect the increased internationalized nature of banking competitions in three respects (Llewellyn, 1999). Customers that have global financing opportunities are able to arbitrage between domestic, foreign banks and capital markets. Banks are not restricted to business in their own country. Regulatory entry barriers have lowered, making it easier for banks to locate in other countries. In other words, many of the largest banks in the world have been struggling toward a new organizational model where terms as home market seem to become a by-product in a broader strategic vision. Swiss bank UBS, the fifth largest bank in the world measured by assets in 2000, has more than 80% of its assets outside Switzerland. Netherlands based bank ABN Amro owns a retail branch network in Brazil, 9,500 km from Amsterdam which constituted 15% of total profits in 2000. In 2003 the 30 largest banks held more than USD 7,586bn, or 39% of their assets, outside their home country. Successes in international banking are few, failures have been common. One of the more spectacular failures was the acquisition of American Crocker Bank by British Midland Bank in 1981, costing the bank USD 1bn over the next five years and forcing its strategy to retreat on the British retail banking market. Midland was acquired by Hong Kong based bank HSBC in 1992, a bank who subsequently showed that internationalization can be a profitable activity. Degree of Internationalization (DOI): The extent to which a Bank exists and operates in the international markets away from its home market can be measured by a metric called ‘Degree of Internationalization (DOI). Generally, it is measured in terms of the share of assets, revenues, profits, or employment that locates abroad. Literature Review The hypothesized positive relationship between performance and DOI goes back at least to Vernon (1971); many studies have followed. It is generally hypothesized that internationalization is good for firms and leads to better performance, for several reasons (Contractor, Kundu, and Hsu 2003; Dunning 1977, 1981). Going international implies that firms can spread fixed costs, such as operating overhead and research and development (RD) expenditures, through a greater scale and scope (Markusen 1984; Kobrin 1991). Internationalization allows firms to learn about domestic markets from their international market experience, thus improving performance (Kobrin 1991). Operating in foreign jurisdictions allows firms to access factors at lower cost (Helpmann 1984; Porter 1990; Jung 1991). This is particularly true for instances of FDI and other modes of direct involvement in foreign markets. Internationalization allows firms to cross-subsidize their domestic operations and provides greater opportunities for price discrimination and tax and price arbitrage. Although theory implies a positive relationship, the empirical evidence of the effects of DOI on performance is mixed (Hsu and Boggs 2003). For example, Sullivan (1994) lists 17 studies that test the relationship between DOI and financial performance, six of which find a positive relationship and five negative. The remaining six find no relationship. This reflects the consensus in the literature that the empirical results are highly dependent on the sample, the measures of DOI, and the measures of performance used. In addition to testing this link, the literature has moved in two distinct directions. First, to address a measurement issue, Sullivan (1994) attempts to more reliably measure the DOI of a firm by developing a novel index measure of internationalization that captures three of its attributes: Structural, Performance, and Attitudinal. As Ramaswamy, Kroeck, and Renforth (1996) show, there are several limitations to the empirical and theoretical underpinnings of Sullivans work as the DOI is measured in uni-dimensional method. There is also a growing literature focus on the shape of the relationship between DOI and performance. Contractor, Kundu, and Hsu (2003) list 15 studies that find the relationship between performance and DOI is linear: seven of the studies find a positive relationship, four a negative relationship and four no relationship. Two studies listed find a U-shaped relationship, and eight find an inverted U-shaped relationship. Contractor, Kundu, and Hsu (2003) and Lu and Beamish (2004) provide theoretical models for curvilinear relationships between DOI and performance. By analyzing data for 125 multinationals, Kim, Hwang, and Burgers (1993) document the importance of global market diversification in the joint management of risk and return. The measures of global diversification capture the number of foreign markets being operated in, as well as the pattern of a firms industries across those countries. A small literature investigates the performance of Canadian banks. DSouza and Lai (2004) estimate the effects of scope, scale, and concentration on Canadas six largest banks. They find that banks with greater concentration in their business lines are less efficient. Interestingly, for some model specifications, the effect of size on performance (as measured by return on equity) is negative. Using a different methodology, Allen and Liu (2005) estimate cost functions for Canadian banks and find that larger banks are more efficient. Neither study considers the impact of DOI on performance. Walid Hejazi and Eric Santor tried to address this DOI Performance realtionship by verifying the direction. i.e., weather DOI is driving superior performance or it is otherwise around. They also brought the risk factor of the country (in which the bank is venturing) into the equation and found that there is a weak but significant positive relationship between DOI Performance. Measuring the Degree of Internalization There are different approaches to measure a banks degree of internationalization, and estimating the degree of internationalization of a firm or bank is to some extent vague and a random process. An initial approach could be to construct a single item indicator or one-dimensional measurement as indicated above in the literature review; Sullivan (1994) reviewed 17 studies which all applied a single item indicator to measure the degree of internationalization, i.e. the ratio of foreign sales to total sales as degree of internationalization. However as indicated by many researchers and as identified in the literature review above from the work of Ramaswamy, Kroeck, and Renforth in 1996, the use of a single item indicator increases the potential error of measurement, because a single parameter is always more prone to external shocks which may or may not indicate the performance. An alternate approach is to combine several indicators into one index. Depending on the choice of indicators, this might provide a better approximation of the degree of internationalization, but the choice of indicators may be restricted on data availability rather than theoretical induction (Sullivan, 1994). We will follow the method that is most cited and adopted by the researchers in UN conference of Trade and Development. This method applies three single item indicators, which are combined in a composite index to analyze the degree of internationalization of a bank, the Transnationality Index (TNI). The TNI is one of the most cited indicators for internationalization (cf. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 1998, van Tulder, van den Berghe, Muller, 2001). The index is expressed as a percentage and calculated as an weighted average of Foreign assets to total assets ratio, Foreign gross income to total gross income ratio and Foreign employment to total employment ratio[1]. The percentage term of the TNI is that the degree of internationalization is presented in one scale, which by definition moves between 0 and 100. Also an internationalization index that incorporates income, staff and assets captures a richer picture of the banks foreign activities than that which would be captured by income, staff and assets separately (cf. Sullivan, 1994). Another attractive characteristic is that the TNI dampens the effect of finance companies or off shore funding constructions if a ratio were only based on foreign assets relative to total assets. A substantial amount of assets can obviously be expected to be located in tax havens or countries with lenient fiscal regimes. Such reported assets would be accompanied by low number of employees. Combining both employees and assets in the TNI would then create a more balanced view. The same argument also applies to investment banking activities that are concentrated in financial centers outside the home country; these ac tivities tend to generate a relatively high degree of income with fewer employees. Demonstration of Measuring DOI through TNI method There is also a flip side for this TNI. It cant take into account the recent technological changes, geographic boundaries, and we cant guarantee every bit of data to be same and uniform in all countries. Technological change: A disadvantage of the TNI might be that the construction of such an index cannot take account of the effects of technological change. Changes in technology can for example raise productivity and increase the assets or income per employee; if these changes are distributed evenly over the total bank organization then its effect on the TNI is probably limited. If the ratio of foreign assets per foreign employee increases in the same amount as the ratio of domestic assets per domestic employee, then technological change has no effect on the TNI. From the mid 1990s however technological advances have had other geographic distribution effects. For example, the development of â€Å"Internet† banks like ING Direct implies that the share of foreign assets and foreign income increases while staff and operations working for the Internet bank basically remain at home. This might potentially depress the true extent of internationalization measured by the TNI. Geographical boundaries: For Banks like Fortis, Belgian/Dutch corporate structure creates a problem to determine what region is home or foreign. This is solved in the database by denoting Benelux as home. Similarly, HSBC is the only bank that is not disclosing information for the home country, instead it is reporting Europe as ‘home region. Data availability: Not all banks have consistently reported detailed information on foreign assets, staff, income or profitability. Banks like SBC, UBS or Deutsche Bank did not report this information although they progressed significantly with their internationalization activities. A general remark is usually found in the financial report stating something like â€Å"due to the integrated nature of our activities worldwide a geographical breakdown does not provide additional information†; the information provided by British and American banks in the 1980s proves otherwise. Data collection from other sources provided valuable information. For example, foreign banks in the United States have to report their balance sheets to the Federal Reserve. Internationalization Patterns Internationalization for banks has progressed at different paces, with different purposes. Here we try to identify these internationalization patterns. As several motives are grounded in history, we start with a brief historic overview of internationalization, after that we shall discuss about various activities that the banks pursued as a part of Internationalization. Historic Overview Internationalization of banks is not a new phenomenon. In 1913 there were approximately 2,600 branches of foreign banks worldwide. The dominating factor at that time was colonization, over 80% of those branches belonged to British banks. The share of foreign banks accounted for one third of banking assets in Latin America and over one half in countries like South Africa, Turkey or China (Goldsmith, 1969). The financial empire of J.P. Morgan started out as a partnership financing American civil war loans from England (Chernow, 1990). International banking has in some respects not changed that much. Over time, innovations in financial instruments, telecommunication, information technology, organization innovation and the growing sophistication of customers have meant a dramatic transformation in the conduct of banking business and client relationships in international banking. The sheer size of international involvement of the present day internationalized banks has increased dramatically (cf. De Nicolà ³, Bartholomew, Zaman, Zephirin, 2004). Foreign assets of the thirty largest banks as a percentage of total assets have changed from 35% in 1980 to over 38% in 2003. However, the absolute size of foreign assets of the thirty largest banks has raised eleven fold from USD 650bn in 1990 to USD 7,571bn in 2000. The increasing importance of foreign activities has affected profitability and stability of internationalizing banks in their home country; it can also have serious effects positive as well as negative on the host economies. The intensity with which banks have pursued internationalization strategies also encouraged us to have a study on them. The dissolution of the British Empire meant that British banks represented the old internationalization of banking. American banks on the other hand have been on the rise since the Second World War. American financial aid, exports of American firms and the export of American ideology such as freeing of competition or creation of uniform markets were feeding ground for internationalization activities of American banks. From the 1960s onwards income in Western economies rose and banks developed more financial products to cater households and businesses as increasing scale of firms raised transaction volumes in corporate finance. American banks formed an apparent threat, seeking out the more profitable activities in investment banking in Europe, being equipped with better staff, more financial resources and more experience. The creation of off shore markets to circumvent (American) regulation and the political potential of seizure of capital belonging to communist states induced the first series of international activities, later propelled by the inflation of capital markets when oil producing countries forced serious wealth transfers. European banks either tried to work together in consortium banks to participate in these activities (Roberts Arnander, 2001) which in the beginning was a cost saving and knowledge rewarding construction or set up foreign activities themselves. Redistribution of the surpluses of oil producing countries found their way to emerging markets, with American banks leading the way. The growing volume of loans masked growing economic imbalances, brought to light from 1981 onwards when Latin American countries defaulted in their loans. Internationalization of banks became a worldwide event (United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, 1991). Institutions like the IMF aided governments with restructuring loans, dealing with severed banks and capital markets in distress. Governments of the lender banks, especially the United States, faced potential crisis at home when the losses in emerging markets were transferred by the large banks to their home country. A consequence of this restructuring period was that in the 1980s capital strength and adequate supervision of internationally operating banks were major issues for bank regulators. A major coordination initiative took place in the Basle Accord of 1988, creating more transparency and uniformity among regulatory policies for internationally active banks. Among others, the Basle Accord became one of the drivers for the Japanese banks to retreat from the international arena. Japanese banks increased international activities sharply from the early 1980s fuelled by strong domestic economic growth, a fast pace of deregulation and large flows of foreign direct investment by Japanese industrial firms. The Japanese stock market decline from 1989 showed that (international) banking strategies had not been based on sound banking practices, affecting bank capital and loan quality at the same time (Canals, 1997). Japanese banks found ways to stave off restructuring of their bad loans for almost a decade, contributing substantially to the prolongation of economic recession, and steadily relinquishing their importance in international banking. A general trend fuelling international activities was the ongoing process of disintermediation from mid-1960: large firms found it more profitable to arrange loans directly with institutional investors, thereby bypassing the role of banks as financial intermediaries. Additionally, stricter monetary policies introduced from the late 1970s onwards eventually led to a steady decrease of interest rates consequently lowering income from the core business of banks. These trends forced banks to reconsider their strategic business portfolios. Non-interest income, especially the high margins of fees and commissions in investment banking, became a promising route. The liberalization of British securities markets in 1984 was followed by an unprecedented wave of acquisitions by host banks. By the end of the 1990s British owned investment banks or securities houses in London were few in number; London as an important financial center had become a manifest of internationalization activities of ban ks. Internationalization of banks was also a response to further regional integration and deregulation (cf. Group of Ten, 2001, January). In Europe especially, banks were aware that the competition for larger clients extended over the geographic borders, but the competition for retail clients remained a domestic issue. By the mid-1980s, European integration created momentum in Europe, redefining markets for banking activities on a multinational scale. Mergers and acquisitions became an important strategic tool for banks. They generally took place in two phases: domestic consolidation and then, international expansion; the creation of higher domestic concentration in order to more effectively compete internationally. Opportunity was provided by the capital markets (lower interest rates and higher stock market prices) and the regulators, privatizing banks or not opposing the takeovers. The close of the decade shows the financial might of just a handful of banks: the top 25 banks in 1980 ha d total assets of USD 1,858bn, equal to 30% of GDP. In 2000 this had risen to 64% of GDP, a combined total of USD 12,781bn. Of this amount, 41% are assets outside the home country. In fact, foreign banks practically control the banking sectors in many Eastern European countries; for some observers the â€Å"Single global banking space is almost a reality† (Mullineux Murinde, 2003). The foreign owned assets of the largest banks exhibit uneven geographic patterns, â€Å"Regions and/or countries of the developed world currently represent the most interconnected cluster of national banking systems† (De Nicolà ³, Bartholomew, Zaman, Zephirin, 2004). Internationalization pattern of Banks Starting in the 1970s, bank internationalization originally consisted of setting up banking activities in financial centers and economic centers. Part of this was related to incentives such as â€Å"follow-the-client† or aimed at increasing overall profitability. Additionally, restructuring and expansion in the domestic markets might have been cumbersome for some and impossible for other banks, further stimulating internationalization. Regulatory idiosyncrasies in the home market might be one explanation for this, but also the existence of a home bias ‘inertia: restructuring the domestic retail networks in the early 1980s might have been more difficult with vested interests in the home country such as labor unions. In particular, banks in smaller countries had to expand abroad for fear of anti-trust regulation at home. For most banks during the 1980s, international expansion supported their domestic strategies and was relatively small compared to the home country. So banks did not have to attract additional capital. When banks initiated larger acquisitions in the late 1980s and 1990s, external capital became more important as a source of financing. (Domestic and foreign) shareholders not only provided additional capital to expand. They also followed management more closely, and pressed for changes when expected results were not delivered. An increasing shareholder role and foreign profitability that was below expectations, led bank managers to change objectives in the mid 1990s: profitability should be internally generated, the domestic base strengthened and foreign activities divested if they did not contribute satisfactorily to total profitability. Banks can offer in principle five product categories: credit, securities, asset management, financial services and insurance. Also, five client types can be distinguished that banks can target: Governmental clients (nation states, supra national institutions), Corporate clients, Institutional clients (other banks, asset managers and insurers), Retail clients and Private clients. The case studies show that banks which entered new market activities actively serviced and targeted a wide range of clients and products. Two specific patterns have been identified: Ø Capital market activities, and Ø Foreign retail banking Capital Market Activities For capital market activities banks offer credit, securities, asset management, and financial advice to governmental, institutional and corporate clients. The majority of the banks had set up such operations by 1980: they participated in the Euromarkets, issued bonds to finance their own activities, and took advantage of the financial deregulation in the financial centers. Expanding capital market activities was spurred in the mid-1980s with the financial liberalization in the United Kingdom, and in the mid-1990s with the prospect of restructuring in the European Union. For several banks, the decision to participate in the capital markets heavily influenced their overall strategy. Paribas and J.P. Morgan decreased their commercial banking activities and transformed themselves into investment banks. Both banks however did not have the scale by the end of the 1990s to remain a major market participant in investment banking and sustain the increasing IT investments: J.P. Morgan was subsequently acquired by Chase Manhattan in 2000 and Paribas by BNP in 1998. Most of the acquisitions of UBS, SBC, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank in the 1990s were capital market related, steadily increasing their reliance on fee income instead of net interest income. The composition of the fee income changed: more lucrative (but volatile) fee income from financial advice and securities re-distributions on mergers and acquisitions was combined with more stable income from asset management activities. Period 1970s 1980s 1990s Reason Growth Eurocurrency markets (London, Paris, Zurich) Financial liberalization of American stock market Financial liberalization European capital markets (London, Paris, Amsterdam) Financial liberalization of Japanese capital markets Catch up new entrants to profit from current bull market, consolidation existing players Example Chase, Citicorp Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, Societe Generale Credit suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Table 2: Development of Capital Market Activities Retail Banking International retail banking has been the domain of a selected number of banks. Chase and Citicorp set out to expand a retail network in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom in the 1950s and 1960s. European banks in the 1970s and 1980s on the other hand did not expand in retail banking in Europe, but expanded in the United States, especially in California where British and Japanese banks bought retail banks helped by lenient regulation. For most Californian banks, their sale was either instigated by regulation (banks that cannot be bought by domestic competitors due to an increase in market share or banks that need outside capital) or poor performance. By the early 1990s a large number of banks exited from the United States market: they found it difficult to transform these banking operations into profitable ones, and their exit was speeded by the deregulation of interstate banking (cf. Tschoegl, 1987). The general expectation was that this would raise the minimum scale of operations to compete effectively, requiring large amounts of additional investments. Banks that remained were for example HSBC and ABN Amro. Eight foreign banks, including all of the British banks, held retail networks in the United States in the early 1980s; by the late 1980s five had opted out. For European banks, the growth of foreign commercial bank networks took place from the mid-1980s. A limited number of banks (HSBC, ABN and Citicorp) have maintained these foreign networks throughout the period. From the 1990s, the following banks pursued retail banking strategies: Ø Santander in Argentina, Mexico, Chile Ø BBVA in Argentina, Chile, Mexico Ø ABN Amro in Brazil and the United States Ø ING in Belgium Ø HSBC in Mexico, Brazil, the United States/Canada and Hong Kong Ø Citibank in Germany Two groups of banks did not enter foreign retail banking, or only to a limited extent: Swiss banks and Japanese banks. Swiss banks had retail banking activities in their domestic market, but not outside Switzerland. Switzerland was a major financial center and as an economy ran a capital surplus; an explanation might be that setting up foreign capital market activities was a more logical foreign extension of activities then setting up or acquiring foreign retail banks. Japanese banks also entered foreign retail banking to a limited extent. Their activities were mainly concentrated in California, where the banks initially had some links with Japanese immigrants. More important, lenient regulators allowed takeover of Californian banks by foreign competitors. The existence of an opportunity set the ability to buy compared to other more regulated banking markets has probably been the main incentive. Organizational form Banks which decided to enter new markets or to strengthen their market position have had a wide range of options available to them as to how they could proceed in implementing their foreign banking activities. Looking back at activities, there has been a strong rise in the number of each of the approaches used. Three specific developments in organizational form have been identified: Branch Networks Alliances and Joint Ventures Internet Banks Branch Network In general, the objective to build a branch network has been to assist foreign clients, finance activities more cheaply or to evade home country regulation. Activities in financial centers were set up, usually starting with London, New York and Singapore or Hong Kong. This was then expanded to second tier financial centers and economic centers in Europe, the United States, Asia and Latin America. Period 1970s 1980s 1990s Incentive Break down consortium Trade relates service existing clients Increase in trade and exports Liberalization of Capital markets Open up markets (Spain) Growth in Asian Capital Markets Opening of Eastern European markets Increase volume of securities market Example Citicorp, Bank of America, Lloyds, Barclays, ABN Amro, NMB, WestLB Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank Table 3: Development of Branch Networks Alliances and Consortium banks Consortium banks were mainly a feature of the late 1960s and 1970s. With these joint ventures, banks tried to create a platform to service foreign clients and undertake corporate finance activities, while sharing the costs of building such an activity independently. In the beginning of the 1980s, there were a number of banks who relied on the consortium banks to provide an alternative for a foreign branch network. These were Amro and Midland. Subsequently, a number of banks built their foreign networks by buying out the other shareholders in the consortium banks. During these alliances banks probably also acquired detailed information of the partner banks. This could be concluded from the observation that ING unsuccessfully acquired former InterAlpha partners from the mid-1990s for its expansion in Europe. From the 1990s, alliances between banks either had to develop specific skills neither bank could achieve alone, or serve as a defensive move in wake of expected restructuring in the European banking market. This usually was accompanied by share exchanges. Alliances to acquire or share specific skills Alliances to ensure future market position Ø Royal Bank of Scotland Santandar (1990) Ø BNP Dresdner (1988-2000) Ø Socià ©tà © Gà ©nà ©rale — BSCH (2000) Ø BBVA UniCredi