European Banking Clubs in the 1960s; A Flawed Strategy

European banking clubs in the 1960s and 1970s began as a movement imbued with the idealism and promise of European integration. The strategic choices which they represented, however, were ultimately doomed to failure. This is so for a number of reasons; they were essentially defensive responses to new competition in traditional as well as new markets, they represented an attempt to rely on cooperation rather than competition in a sophisticated and highly differentiated marketplace, and their constituent institutions eventually realised the potential for individual profit which international banking represented. A recent verdict on the vast gulf between the hopes which attended their formation in one institution and the eventual outcome is that, "there are few examples of such misjudgement" [Gall, Feldman, James, Holtfrerich and Buschgert, 1995, p. 752]. This paper will consider some of the reasons for the founding of the banking clubs, and consider their place in the rapidly changing intemafional financial environment of the late 1960s. It will assess the