 On the effects of banks’ equity ownership on credit markets: an antitrust perspective on the Glass-Steagall actRabah Amir () and Michael Troge No 2004038, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Abstract: Recent U.S. legislation (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) allows commercial banks to enter merchant banking, i.e. hold equity in non-financial firms. A stylised auction-theoretic model is developed to investigate the effects of bank equity stakes in firms on the competition in bank loans. The main finding is that the largest stake confers a competitive advantage to the holding bank and constitutes a barrier to entry in equity acquisition, resulting in high interest rates charged to firms. This finding unearths an antitrust dimension in the controversial debate on the separation of banking and commerce in the U.S., and provides a theoretical basis for recent empirical evidence on the relationship between bank equity holdings and the cost of debt finance in Germany and Japan. Keywords: banking and commerce; regulation and antitrust; Glass-Steagall act; Gramm-Leach-Bliley act; auctions (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2004038 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC. |
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