Why do Agricultural Credit Cooperatives Merge? The Portuguese Experience

Paula Cabo and João Rebelo

Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 2005, vol. 76, issue 3, 491-516

Abstract: Abstract**: Over the last decade, increasing financial problems in the Portuguese Agricultural Credit Cooperatives (ACCs), mainly difficulty in gathering equity, have forced them to pursue an intensive merger activity. This paper describes the economic reasons that have led the ACCs to merge, and analyses the ex post merger impact on their economic performance. The results show that: (a) incorporating ACCs are larger, more profitable and hold a better credit management; (b) incorporated ACCs are smaller, face difficulties in reaching a minimum efficient scale and have weaker credit management as well as leverage problems; and (c) merged ACCs have a heavy administrative cost structure and also face profitability problems. Regarding the mergers’ ex post impact on the ACCs performance, we find no positive influence on cost reduction, credit management and solvency ratio.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1370-4788.2005.00287.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:annpce:v:76:y:2005:i:3:p:491-516

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1370-4788

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics is currently edited by Marco Marini

More articles in Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().