Cherry Picking or Driving Out Bad Management: Foreign Acquisitions in Turkish Banking

This paper analyzes the determinants of cross-border acquisitions and the impact of foreign acquisitions on performance in the Turkish banking sector. The results suggest that foreign banks target relatively better performing banks to acquire, and that post-acquisition performance of the targets does not improve. There is some evidence that both established and newly acquired foreign banks focus on expanding their market shares. Concerning static-ownership effects, the results also show that, in general, foreign-owned and state-owned banks perform as well as private-owned domestic banks. The only exception is with respect to non-performing loans, in that state-owned banks seem to suffer from asset quality problems.