Western banks are exercising a growing influence over their counterparts in many emerging market countries. They have been introducing a new and more aggressively competitive element to local banking markets and local banks are being forced to rationalise and modernise their own operations in order to compete with them.
Western banks are setting up their own companies in those regions as they increasingly see the greatest potential for new business in, for example, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Moreover, having, in many cases, more streamlined operations and greater experience of the international market place, they are usually able to offer a more effective service to clients than local banks can provide.
