№ 2019/3

The purpose of the article is, based on the logical and historical analysis of the development of the German banking system, to identify the factors for the formation of financial intermediaries involved in the national economy model and the conditions for their resilience and the ability to transform in the context of existential challenges, in particular globalization and integration processes. The specifics of the German national banking system: powerful family banks, large universal banks, public savings banks and cooperative banks, united in the associations, financial institutions of development was largely determined by the nature of political institutions and industrialization in the country. The prolonged political fragmentation, limiting the possibilities of raising capital, led to the emergence of powerful trading private family banks and public participation in the creation and functioning of banks. Late industrialization and lack of infrastructure contributed to the emergence of large vertically integrated enterprises and large banks, closely linked with them. The ideals of the Reformation, in particular, the rational organization of life and thrift, as well as the propensity of the German government to revolution from above, contributed to the formation of public savings banks to prevent the revolutionary movement. Powerful co-operative movement is also largely due to state policy: in particular, to the moment of the formation the first rural cooperative banks, most peasants already had experienced participating in federal-financed farmers associations. The survival of universal banks, public savings banks and cooperative banks in the context of financial globalization, pushing financial systems to converge with the Anglo-Saxon model, became possible due to the preservation of the "customer-home bank" (lost for large customers) model for small and medium-sized businesses and integration in the model of production of diversified high-quality products, requiring close cooperation between enterprises of large and small and medium-sized businesses. The condition for the survival of cooperative and savings banks was the associational structure, where the central and regional institutes added professionalism, expanded the range of possible operations and searched for new identities under existential challenges. The motives of the state in preserving the institutions of public savings and cooperative banks at different stages were: protection of artisans, farmers and small businesses as important institutions of the German economic and social order; minimizing economic concentration; stimulating competition between banks; supporting federalism through a locally-oriented banking system. The aggregate share of loans to non-banking institutions of banks where profit earning is not the main (or only) statutory goal, according to our calculations, ranged from 52.4% to 61.4% during the years 1970-2017, and from 2012 it does not fall below 60 %. The general mission of public savings, cooperative banks and financial developmental institutions is the economic and social integration of society, support for the federal state system, that is, they are institutes of stability and trust in the broadest sense.

Keywords: national model of banking system, universal banks, public savings banks, cooperative banks, associations, industrialization, globalization, trust