We empirically investigate how bank internationalization, organizational complexity, and geographical complexity stemming from foreign-affiliate type and geographic dispersion affect parent bank stability and profitability. We base our analysis on unique, hand-collected data for the worldwide locations of subsidiaries and branches of EU banks. Our results show that internationalization benefits bank stability by reducing default risk, and it is significantly associated with lower earnings volatility but poorer profitability. With regard to foreign organizational complexity, banks with both foreign subsidiaries and foreign branches are more stable than banks with foreign branches exclusively, which are more stable than banks with only foreign subsidiaries. Nevertheless, higher geographic complexity is associated with lower default risk, higher volatility in earnings, and higher profitability. Further investigations on the sovereign debt crisis and bank size indicate that the sovereign debt crisis in 2011 amplified the relationship and our findings mainly hold for small banks.

我们实证研究了银行国际化、组织复杂性和源自外国附属公司类型和地理分散的地理复杂性如何影响母银行的稳定性和盈利能力。我们的分析基于针对欧盟银行子公司和分行的全球位置的独特手工收集数据。我们的结果表明，国际化通过降低违约风险有利于银行的稳定性，并且与较低的盈利波动性显着相关，但盈利能力较差。从国外组织复杂性来看，既有外国子公司又有外国分行的银行比单独设外国分行的银行更稳定，后者比只有外国子公司的银行更稳定。然而，较高的地理复杂性与较低的违约风险相关，收益波动更大，盈利能力更高。对主权债务危机和银行规模的进一步调查表明，2011 年的主权债务危机放大了这种关系，我们的发现主要适用于小银行。