AUTHOR
Ingvarsson, Sofie; Nordlander, Maria

DATE
2000-10-31

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
The internationalisation of the financial sector is growing at high pace. Cross-border mergers are becoming more and more common when financial service organisations want to grow and become internationalised. It is not only the organisation that becomes internationalised but also the product assortment. Based on this our purpose is to describe the changes in a financial service when it is internationalised through a cross-border merger.

In order to fulfil our purpose a qualitative study on the merger between the Swedish bank Nordbanken and the Finnish bank Merita was conducted. In our study we applied theories regarding the service concept, internationalisation of services, and financial services, which was tested by conducting two personal interviews.

The study showed that no major changes has been done regarding the financial service when it was internationalised. It is important to remember that financial services are alike all over that world and easy to imitate.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--00/223--SE / NR 2000:223