Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Figures and Tables
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Context and Conceptual Framework
- Part II Comparative Country Cases
- 5 A Qualitative and Statistical Analysis of European Cooperative Banking Groups
- 6 The Persistence of the Three-Pillar Banking System in Germany
- 7 Alternative Banks in a Dualistic Economy: The Case of Italy before and during the Euro Crisis
- 8 Alternative Banks on the Margin: The Case of Building Societies in the United Kingdom
- 9 The United States: Alternative Banking from Mainstream to the Margins
- 10 BRIC Statecraft and Government Banks
- 11 Cooperative Banks in India: Alternative Banks Impervious to the Global Crisis?
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
6 - The Persistence of the Three-Pillar Banking System in Germany
from Part II - Comparative Country Cases
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Figures and Tables
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Context and Conceptual Framework
- Part II Comparative Country Cases
- 5 A Qualitative and Statistical Analysis of European Cooperative Banking Groups
- 6 The Persistence of the Three-Pillar Banking System in Germany
- 7 Alternative Banks in a Dualistic Economy: The Case of Italy before and during the Euro Crisis
- 8 Alternative Banks on the Margin: The Case of Building Societies in the United Kingdom
- 9 The United States: Alternative Banking from Mainstream to the Margins
- 10 BRIC Statecraft and Government Banks
- 11 Cooperative Banks in India: Alternative Banks Impervious to the Global Crisis?
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Historically, the banking systems of most European countries were largely similar. They were all ‘three-pillar systems’ comprising three important and largely distinct groups of banks. In this kind of system, the first pillar is that of the private banks – some large and some small, and some with and some without a branch network. The second pillar is that of a country's savings banks, consisting of local savings banks, central financial institutions and a host of other affiliated financial and non-financial institutions. Cooperative or mutual banks and their affiliated institutions constitute the third pillar. Thus almost by the definition of a three-pillar-system, savings banks and cooperative banks, the main topic of the present volume on ‘alternative banks’, have played an important role in the financial systems of almost all European countries until quite recently.
The wave of financial deregulation, liberalization and privatization in the late twentieth century has changed the role and the institutional forms of these two groups of ‘alternative banks’ in many European countries and thereby also altered the overall structure of their national banking systems. The general political tendency of the past years was to regard savings banks and cooperative banks as somewhat old-fashioned and inefficient, and to advocate and implement policies that correspond to this view.
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- Alternative Banking and Financial Crisis , pp. 101 - 122Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014