Bank Mergers in Sweden

In this chapter we present a longitudinal study of mergers within Swedish banking over the last 100 years. One principal reason for this long time span is the fluctuation in merger activities and a desire to study the impact of political priorities—codified in regulatory regimes—on these mergers. The stakeholders—owners, managers, and the state—are the focus of this chapter. ¹ It is obvious that not only managers and owners but also states play important roles in promoting or restricting mergers between banks in favour of the citizens and the public interest. This study focuses on the role of these stakeholders in the merger process and on the interplay between them. Thus, our intention is to analyze not only the relationship between managers and owners, but also and foremost the role of the state as a stakeholder. The stability of the banking market and of its participants has been of vital importance to the development of the economy and therefore of interest to the state. But during the latter decades of the twentieth century, banks—as suppliers of capital—have become a vital part of Government financial policy. In this analysis we will concentrate on how well the interests of managers and owners correspond to the changing interests of the state, and on how representatives of the banks have engaged in lobbying or negotiating with state representatives in order to influence ‘the rules of the game’.