Investment Banking and Security Market Development: Does Finance Follow Industry?∗

This paper looks at the industrial organization of the investment banking industry. Longterm relationships between business firms and investment banks are pervasive in developed security markets. A vast literature argues that better monitoring and information result from relationships. Thus, security markets should allocate resources better when an investment banking industry exists. We study necessary conditions for sustainable relationships and then explore whether policy can do something to foster them. We argue that the structure of investment banking is determined by the economics of the technology of relationships: (i) Sunk set up cost to establish a relationship. (ii) The firm pays the investment bank only when it does a deal. (iii) To a significant degree the investment bank cannot prevent other banks from free riding on the information created by the relationship. Then: (a) Relationships can emerge in equilibrium only if the industry is an oligopoly of large investment banks with similar market shares. (b) Relationships are for large firms–small firms are rationed out of relationships by investment banks. (c) Scale economies due to entry costs are irrelevant when the market is large but can prevent an industry from emerging when the market is small. While policy can probably remove obstacles that increase the costs of relationships, the sizedistribution of business firms determines whether an investment banking industry is feasible: it will not emerge if large firms are few. In this sense, “finance follows industry.” Large firms can escape this limitation by listing in foreign developed security markets. JEL classification: G20, L22