Resumo

Although it is a current theme, in Brazil there are no studies that correlate internationalization with the performance of the Brazilian banks in a conclusive manner. Dórea et al. (2015) performed the first research in Brazil that seeks a relation between the performance of the national firms, except banks, and its internationalization degree and reached a conclusion that this study did not contemplate important variables that influence the internationalization degree and its performance.

Taking into consideration the importance of this theme and the lack of researches, this study seeks to investigate if the internationalization degree influences the performance of Brazilian banks, and in what way it is affected.

Despite internationalization being a current process, there aren’t many studies that study it directly relating it to the banking sector, mainly in Brazil. There are some studies that explain the story of the Brazilian financial system and that touch on the subject of internationalization like the studies of Corazza and Oliveira (2007) and of Vieira et al. (2012). Other researches like Nunes et al. (2011), studied the process of internationalization in a specific Brazilian bank, their motivations and their results.

The universe of study was composed by 241 banks and 2250 observations. The statements used for the research were the following: Balance Sheet, Statement of Income, Liabilities and Loans Operations, Geographic Dispersion and Maturity and Balance in Foreign Currency. The methodology of this study was based on the works of Aarma et al. (2004), HEFFERNAN and FU (2008), and GIRADONE et al. (2008)

The internationalization of the bank statistically significant and positively affects the three performance variables, ROA, ROE and NIM. This data proves that in the period studied, the Brazilian banks with higher internationalization degree, presented superior results than the banks with lower levels of internationalization. Other than the internationalization the variables that affects in a significant and positive manner all of the dependent variables are the efficiency index, indicating that the banks that can decrease the personnel expenses in relation to the service revenues.

When it comes to internationalization, it is inferred that it is always positive for the businesses, and that in the current era, where globalization is mentioned more and more, the present study sums up evidence about the concepts that we generalized as the truth, are in fact true. Positive and significantly associated with the internationalization degree are the size of the bank, the operational efficiency of the banks, higher foreign investment and higher assets and liabilities. The more internationalized banks are larger than the others, and have a better relation between costs and revenue

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