Foreign-Owned Banks in the U.S.

Anxieties about the declining influence of U.S. banks in international markets made headlines, and prompted Congressional inquiries, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. More recently, however, concern about U.S. banks' competitiveness overseas has given way to alarm about the growing market share of foreign banks in U.S. markets. By one estimate, foreign banks now hold nearly 50 percent of all existing commercial and industrial loans made to U.S. businesses. Moreover, foreign banks made these gains swiftly, more than doubling their share of the U.S. market in the past 10 years. Conceptually, a firm can increase its market share by charging lower prices than its rivals and/or by producing higher quality products and services than its rivals. There is some empirical evidence that foreign banks may have employed both strategies, underpricing U.S. banks in some types of loans and offering higher quality service than U.S. banks in some product lines. In competitive markets, these strategies will reduce profits - low price strategies reduce per unit revenues, and high quality strategies increase per unit costs - unless they generate higher unit sales or allow the bank to charge higher prices. Consistent with this, low profitability has been a chronic problem for foreign banks operating in the U.S.