What Motivates Malaysian Banks to Go International? A Case of Islamic Banking Products

Only a few cross-country empirical studies have been conducted to measure the performance of commercial banks especially before, during, and after crises (financial or political). This study makes an attempt to fill the gap in literature by investigating the impacts of crises on Gulf corporate conceal (GCC) commercial banks performance over the period between1997-2007. The rationale behind this selection is: i) the GCC countries within this period are witnessed two major crises; the political crisis (second Gulf war) and the financial crisis (current global crisis). Hence, it is important for the manager to recognize the best bank policy under each crisis that could help both bankers and regulators in how to manage these crises; ii) Banking system within GCC countries are comprise of two different operating banking systems; Islamic and Conventional. As both are operating in similar environments, it is of interest to examine whether, one can make judgments concerning the success of thei