An examination of cross-border strategies in banking

The emergence of countries such as China and India and the general trend towards economic opening has led to announcements of global strategic intent by virtually all of the major companies in recent years (Grosse, 2005). However, a primary consideration in focusing specifically on the cross-border activities of banks emanated from the sheer size of their international activities. For example, a cursory examination of foreign assets as a percentage of total assets of the 30 largest banks reveals that they increased from 35 per cent in 1980 to over 38 per cent by 2003 (De Nicolo et al., 2004). Moreover, the absolute size of the foreign assets of these same banks increased 11-fold from $650 billion in 1990 to over $7,571 billion in 2000 (Slager, 2005). Prior to the credit crunch, the global banking sector was estimated to have had a market value in excess of $65,700 billion in 2005 (Datamonitor, 2006).