The Causes of U.S. Bank Expansion Overseas: The Case of Great Britain

Abstract

IN RECENT YEARS there has been a rapid increase in the activity of American banks outside the borders of the United States. This growth of foreign business has been far greater than that of domestic business. For example, while total assets of all U.S. commercial banks grew from $255.7 billion in 1960 to $1,486 billion in 1978, the total assets of overseas branches rose from $3.5 billion to $306 billion over the same period. Paralleling this growth was the increase in the number of overseas branches and subsidiaries from 131 in 1960 to 1,433 in 1978.1 Although the growth of new international markets (such as the Eurodollar market) that have arisen with the international expansion of commercial banking has been extensively investigated, little attention has been paid to the motivating factors underlying overseas bank expansion. This paper proposes to fill this gap in the literature by examining the factors affecting the expansion of U.S. banks into Great Britain, a country that has, so far, been the most important area for overseas business.2 International expansion of banking may be affected by both economic and regu-

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