A Comparative analysis of the performance of the building societies and retail banks

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to extend the literature on the comparative performance of mutual and stock retail banks by examining a unique episode in the history of financial services.  The existing data allows us to consider the relative performance of the same businesses under different organizational forms. The results contrast with the existing findings and cast doubt on the hypothesis that mutuals generally outperform stock retail banks. We summarized the idea that mutuals can be regarded as a homogeneous group of institutions.