Foreign versus domestic banks' performance in the UK: a multicriteria approach

Although the banking sector in the UK is one of the most open and it is characterized by an increasing foreign bank presence, it remains relatively under-researched compared to studies for other countries. The objective of this paper is to investigate the performance of the UK banking sector focusing on the performance of the domestic banks as opposed to the performance of the foreign banks in order to test the hypothesis of higher performance of the domestic banks in a developed market. For this purpose, the UTADIS multicriteria methodology is employed to compare domestic and foreign banks' performance over multiple criteria, such as profitability, liquidity, risk and efficiency, using a data sample covering 26 domestic and 32 foreign banks operating in the UK over the period 1998 to 2001. The results of the study support the home advantage hypothesis, suggesting that the higher performance of domestic banks compared to foreign banks is also the case in the UK. The most important distinguishing performance factors between the two groups of banks are interest revenue to total earning assets, and profit before taxes to loans plus securities, which are higher for the domestic banks.