This paper analyzes how French cooperative banking groups adapted their organization, status and model to develop and grow, until the current financial crisis. It explores how they benefitted from evolutions in cooperative law that lowered financing constraints and increased the scope of their activities, becoming large banking groups, and identifies how these groups tried to develop a model of governance, characterized by internal control, which was partly dedicated to the members, but biased more and more towards the top of the organizational pyramid and to stockholders (the new stakeholders coming from the existence of listed vehicles). While the developing business model for cooperative banks appeared to confer a comparative advantage and was synonymous with efficiency before the financial crisis, it seems that the hybridization of the cooperative model has also been a source of conflict of interest, weakness in strategy and an incentive to increase risk. The third part of the article examines how French cooperative banking groups have been hurt by the recent crisis and whether different organizational and strategic features or choices may explain different levels of resilience to financial turmoil. Eficiencia e hibridación en los bancos cooperativos. El caso francésEste artículo analiza la forma en que los bancos cooperativos franceses han modificado su estatuto, su estructura organizativa y su modelo, para desarrollarse, hasta la reciente crisis financiera. Se pone de manifiesto, entre otras cosas, como esta banca ha sabido aprovechar la evolución del derecho cooperativo para disminuir sus restricciones de financiación, extender y diversificar su campo de actividad, llegando a convertirse *
Is the cooperative ownership structure a factor of efficiency in banking firms ? Some economists, especially American, consider that cooperative banks operate inefficiently, and that they will disappear. Using the same analysis than these authors, we try, in this paper, to explain the good performances of cooperative banks in France, comparing to stock banks. The relevant criterion which allows to set apart cooperative banks from stock banks is the ownership structure, and not the existence of a common bond. We then develop the consequences of the cooperative ownership structure of financial institutions. Cooperative banks appear to be able to compete efficiently with stock banks, even if the aim of the organisation is not the maximisation of the profitability for the capital owners. JEL classifications : G21, L2
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Les réseaux coopératifs bancaires français ont connu depuis les années 90 de profondes mutations; résultant à la fois de contraintes et d’opportunités, elles se sont traduites tant par des restructurations internes que par des opérations de croissance externe. L’article montre une transformation en groupes tournés vers la banque universelle, mais hybrides, puisque l’on y trouve des structures coopératives et des structures à forme de sociétés par actions. Cette hybridation des groupes coopératifs n’est pas sans poser des problèmes à terme, relatifs à la détermination des objectifs du groupe et de ses entités, au conflit pour le partage de la valeur créée et du pouvoir, et à l’émergence potentielle d’une concurrence entre entités d’un même groupe. Plus généralement, cette mutation entraîne un déplacement des équilibres entre les différentes parties prenantes : managers, employés, administrateurs et sociétaires, et désormais aussi actionnaires. Défi auquel les groupes bancaires coopératifs français devront répondre pour conserver leur cohésion et leur capacité à se développer.French cooperative banking groups have profoundly changed since the 1990s. The result of both constraints and opportunities, the changes have involved internal restructuring as much as external growth. The article shows a transformation in groups towards a universal bank but with hybrid structures incorporating both cooperatives and conventional companies. This hybridization of cooperative groups may eventually pose problems in terms of defining the objectives of the group and its components, the conflict over sharing the wealth created and power, and the potential for competition arising between parts of the same group. More broadly, this transformation has shifted the balance of power among the different stakeholders—managers, employees, board members, cooperative members and now also investors—creating a challenge that cooperative banking groups will have to meet in order to maintain their cohesion and capacity to develop
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