关键词: 城市商业银行, 合并重组, 小企业贷款, 软信息

Abstract: City commercial banks (CCBs) are local small and medium-sized banks to serve local small and small-sized enterprises. However, the risks of CCBs are high and endanger financial stability. In order to deal with financial risks, in 2004, the CBRC issued the “Outline for the Supervision and Development of City Commercial Banks” and implemented a merger and restructuring reform, which led to the M&A of CCBs and city credit unions from the earliest community-based banks to banks that operate across districts. As the policy tool to address financial risks, M&A has inevitably led to an increase in the scale of operations of CCBs, which raises a series of questions: Will CCBs deviate from the policy positioning of serving small-sided enterprises after the expansion? Will the business behavior of CCBs become similar to that of state-owned banks? Will M&A of CCBs have negative effects on the financing environment for small-sided enterprises? In order to answer the above questions, it is necessary to study the impact of M&A of CCBs on their small business lending behaviors.
Due to the lack of high-quality micro data, there are very few empirical studies on how M&A of CCBs affects their small business lending behaviors. Based on the data of the CBRC-s Atlas of Rural Financial Services Distribution in China's Banking Industry from 2006 to 2011 and local yearbooks, this paper sorts out the M&A events of CCBs and urban credit unions in China since 2005 and uses them to study the above questions. The empirical study finds that M&A of CCBs reduces the share of small business loans of the merged banks by 9.6%. The mechanism study finds that the M&A is a “double-edged sword”, i. e., there are two distinct impact channels, namely, the efficiency mechanism and the information mechanism. In terms of the information mechanism, the M&A increases the size and hierarchy of banks, lengthens the information transmission chain, reduces the incentive to collect soft information, thus reducing small business loans. This is reflected in the greater decline in the share of small business loans in the cities which underwent cross-regional merge or in the provinces with poor telecommunications infrastructure. In terms of the efficiency mechanism, the overall efficiency of banks increases as the high efficient banks acquire low efficient banks, which improves the financing environment for small enterprises. This is reflected in the fact that in cities with high NPL ratios, the share of small business loans declines less after M&A. Since the overall effect is negative, this implies that using M&A as the policy instrument to deal with financial risks will make the two policy goals, i. e., maintaining financial stability and improving the loan environment for small-sided enterprises, incompatible.
The main contribution of this paper is to assess the policy effects of M&A of CCBs, which can provide a reference for the continuing merger and restructuring reform of CCBs, rural commercial banks, and village banks. This paper puts forward two main policy recommendations: First, vigorously develop financial technologies to reduce the negative impact of M&A of banks on small business financing; Second, gradually liberalize banking licenses under risk-controlled conditions, allow banks to go bankrupt, and develop community banks that truly serve small enterprises through market competition.

Key words: City Commercial Bank, Mergers and Acquisitions, Small-sized Enterprise Loans, Soft Information