Paper #931

Title:

Interlocking directorates in Spanish banking in the twentieth century

Author:

Francisco J. Pueyo

Date:

January 2006

Abstract:

Spanish banking historiography asserts that the largest banks performed in the twentieth century as though they constituted a monopoly. One of their main coordination schemes would have been a network of interlocking bank directors that would include most of the financial firms. Evidence available for the 1920s and 1960s seems to confirm the veracity of this hypothesis. In this paper, more systematic evidence is presented to cover the whole twentieth century with the aim of checking whether these networks persisted over the entire period or they were by-products of temporary situations. Our results show that no general network remained for more than a decade. Therefore, it should be ruled out that interlocking directorates worked as a coordination device of an alleged banking cartel.

Keywords:

Monopolization strategies, Interlocking directorates, Spanish banking

JEL codes:

L12, L14, N24

Area of Research:

Economic and Business History

Published in:

Investigaciones de Historia Económica, num. 6, October 2006

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