Do domestic and cross-border M&As differ? Cross-country evidence from the banking sector

Are the drivers of domestic and cross-border M&As in the banking sector different? We answer this question studying the ex ante determinants of national and international acquisitions in the banking sector in an unbalanced panel of nearly 1000 banks from 50 countries, from 1992 to 2007. Contrary to most of the previous research, mainly based on aggregate data, our results show that there are only few differences between the determinants of domestic and cross-borderM&As. In fact, although banks that bid cross-border are even larger than those that bid domestically, and they are relatively more liquid and better capitalized, only one country characteristic and no bank characteristics have an opposite and statistically significant effect on the probability that a bank bids domestically or cross-border.