The Impact of the Multi-Stakeholders Governance on the Performance of Cooperative Banks: Evidence of European Cooperative Banks

Compared with the commercial banks, cooperative banks remained relatively unscathed during the 2007's crisis. In this paper, we look for possible explanations as to their first-rate performance. To this end, we analyze the past and present indicators of the cooperative system, particularly in terms of internal governance's mechanism. Our sample is composed of a number of European banks which has attempted to study the presence of an impact, affected by the new governance of cooperative banks, on their performance. It has been revealed that, differing to previous research; members of the cooperative banks have a negative impact on performance. However, our study showed that the law of membership may be the fundamental cause for its performance.