We provide evidence on organizational structure and performance at bank holding companies (BHC's). First, we show that a BHC's member banks benefit from access to internal capital markets. Second, we ask if these benefits are best realized within loosely structured, decentralized organizations or more consolidated, centralized firms. We find that BHC's with many subsidiaries are less profitable and have lower q ratios than similar BHC's with fewer subsidiaries. However, because we study multi-unit firms in a single industry, our results suggest that the diversification discount reported in the corporate finance literature reflects not only industry diversification, but also organizational structure.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.