Entry Modes - A banking perspective

In the European Union the borders are being wiped out and this is creating new business markets for companies that before never had dreamt of going international. Today we see it as natural that companies act world-wide to gain success and increase the growth and profit. They need to do this to be competitive on the ever changing market that we have nowadays. One of the most important things to have in mind when thinking of expanding to other countries is which entry mode to choose. There are several ways of entering a market and if you do it right you might be very successful, but if you do not spend time on this decision the internationalization process can become very short and the company can lose a lot of capital. With this thesis we want to investigate how two large Scandinavian banks made their presence into the Baltic market in the mid 90’s, which kind of entry modes they went for and if one of them made a wiser choice than the other. In the thesis we have also gone in to the factors that have been of high importance when making the decision on why they chose the Baltic market and also which kind of entry mode. Our main findings after having made this thesis is that it was the profit and growth potential that was the main driving force for establishing on the Baltic market, but also the short distance and the low costs of going in on the market. The choice of entry mode differs between the two banks and that was expected since they have different strategies when going international. And even the know-how of the market in question and resources of the company have been important factors