This empirical paper focuses on the total number of banks and the number of main banks (banks that play an important and durable role in the financing) of firms. We test two major results of the theoretical literature: Low quality firms are likely to choose a high number of banks, in order to escape from a close monitoring. Strong multiple banking relationships benefit high quality firms, for they don’t pay the informational rent that a single bank would have extracted. We use accounting variables and credit declarations for industrial French firms. We show that the total number of banks increases when the economic profitability of the firm decreases. No important link appears between the performance of the firms and their number of main banks.
Classification JEL: G32, D82, C10