Credit Rationing, Customer Relationship and the Number of Banks: an Empirical Analysis

The recent important transformations of the banking sector, especially through numerous mergers and acquisitions, both in Europe and in the USA, have raised serious concerns for the financing of small businesses (SBS). Indeed, SBS are known to be heavily dependent of this financing channel but to be rather opaque. It has long been thought that banks classically solved this problem by developing long term customer relationships. But will the new large banks, born from the current restructuring process, be able to continue to play this role? If not, what strategy should SBS develop to compose their bank pool in order to avoid, as much as possible, credit rationing? These questions are at the heart of our analysis. We show that there is no unique rule: all depends on the degree of SBS opacity and the kind of bank the SBS are working with.