ABSTRACT
Introduction e European banking sector is not homogeneous. Basically, one can distinguish between public banks, investor-owned banks and stakeholder-owned banks. e latter category comprises savings banks, credit unions, mutuals and cooperative banks. ere are indications that these stakeholder-owned banks weathered the subsequent storms relatively well so far, without large-scale state support.1 At the same time, as stated in Part I of this volume, these types of banks did not receive much attention before the nancial crisis hit, and hence the question arose why these banks apparently have avoided great nancial distress.
