How dependent are New England's mid-sized firms on the region's largest bank holding companies?

The degree to which mid-sized firms--the \"middle market\"- depend on large regional banks for short-term credit is an issue particularly relevant to New England. If this dependence is heavy, then the recent consolidation among the regions large bank holding companies could be forcing its mid-sized firms to accept short-term credit on uncompetitive terms. The dependence of New Englands middle market on the regions banking institutions as a whole, both large and small, is also of concern. The greater this dependence, the more vulnerable are the regions mid-sized firms to sharp contractions in the availability of bank credit, such as the regional \"credit crunch\" that occurred during the early 1990s. ; In order to address these issues, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston surveyed the credit sources of the regions middle market firms. The results show that such firms are by no means exclusively dependent on the regions largest commercial banks, suggesting that uncompetitive pricing is currently not a concern. The implications of the surveys results for the vulnerability of the regions mid-sized firms to credit crunches are less clear. The degree to which these firms depend on the regions banks as a whole for short-term credit varies with the measure of dependence used.