PhD thesis: Essays on foreign ownership in transition banking

Tigran Poghosyan’s thesis provides a detailed empirical investigation of an interesting recent development in international banking – the massive entry of foreign banks into transition economies. The main contribution of the thesis is the application of innovative empirical techniques on a novel data set at the individual bank level to address gaps in the existing literature.

Poghosyan’s analysis suggests that foreign investors target most efficient banks for acquisition, which implies that the established wisdom that foreign banks are more efficient than domestic banks in transition economies might be a consequence of sample selection. In addition, the entry strategies of foreign banks differ depending on the institutional background of host countries: foreign banks aim at improving the efficiency of target banks (exploiting monopoly rents) in more (less) developed transition economies. Finally, the analysis shows that the mode of foreign entry has important implications for the post-entry performance of banks: cross-border mergers and acquisitions boost competition, while greenfield entry results in greater efficiency.

Curriculum vitae
Tigran Poghosyan (Armenië, 1978) studied Economics at the CERGE-EI in Prague. He conducted his research (with a Ubbo Emmius grant of the university of Groningen) at SOM research School of the Faculty of Economics and Business. He will be awarded his PhD in economics and business on 10 September (4.15pm). His supervisors are prof.dr. J. de Haan and prof.dr. E. Sterken. The thesis title is: Essays on foreign ownership in transition banking. Poghosyan currently works at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).