We examine large public interventions in the financial sector, such as bank nationalizations and search for “financial protectionism,” a decrease in the quantity and/or an increase in the price of loans that banks from one country make to borrowers resident in another. We use a bank‐level panel data set spanning all U.K.‐resident banks between 1997Q3 and 2010Q1. After nationalization, foreign banks reduced their fraction of British loans by about 11% and increased their effective interest rates by about 70 basis points. In contrast, nationalized British banks did not significantly change either their loan mix or effective interest rates.

We use data on UK banks׳ minimum capital requirements to study the impact of changes to bank-specific capital requirements on cross-border bank loan supply from 1999Q1 to 2006Q4. By examining a sample in which each recipient country has multiple relationships with UK-resident banks, we are able to control for demand effects. We find a negative and statistically significant effect of changes to banks׳ capital requirements on cross-border lending: a 100 basis point increase in the requirement is associated with a reduction in the growth rate of cross-border credit of 5.5 percentage points. We also find that banks tend to favor their most important country relationships, so that the negative cross-border credit supply response in “core” countries is significantly less than in others. Banks tend to cut back cross-border credit to other banks (including foreign affiliates) more than to firms and households, consistent with shorter maturity, wholesale lending which is easier to roll off and may be associated with weaker borrowing relationships.