Mergers and acquisitions and bank performance in Europe: The role of strategic similarities

We examine the impact of European Union banks’ strategic similarities on post-merger performance. We find that, on average, bank mergers have resulted in improved performance. We also find that for domestic deals, it can be quite costly to integrate institutions which are dissimilar in terms of their loan, earnings, cost, deposit and size strategies. For cross-border mergers, differences between merging partners in their loan and credit risk strategies are conducive to higher performance, whereas diversity in their capital and cost structure has a negative impact from a performance standpoint.