Turki Alshammari

This paper strives to recognize the possible performance differences between the two popular banking forms in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Applying different methodologies on the data that span the period 2003–2015, this study docu¬ments significant differences with respect to the period, countries, and performance measures. Specifically, conventional banks in GCC countries outperform their Islamic counterparts in profitability. Also, bank specific factors such as liquidity, capital ad¬equacy, bank size and growth all affect the profitability. In addition, GCC conventional and Islamic banks were isolated from the 2008 subprime crisis even though their prof¬itability seems to be decayed differently over the period of the economic downturn.

This study aims to examine the connection between cash level and corporate performance, as well as the cash level determinants for all nonfinancial firms in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The empirical analysis employs numerous statistical techniques such as panel regression models and the Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM). The main result of the study confirms a positive relationship between the cash level and both the corporate performance and the firm value, which signifies the role of cash in supporting the corporate productive activities in times of rare cash. The results also show that large firms, especially those with less leverage, experience better corporate performance. Additionally, the results demonstrate that when using different levels of cash holdings as well as different levels of firm size, both the magnitude and the significant positive effect of the cash level on corporate performance and firm value are not altered. For the determinants of the cash level, the results confirm that the most important variables are product competition, free cash flow, corporate liquidity, capital expenditures, and financial constraints. The results do not confirm that the amount of dividend paid has a significant influence on the cash level. All results are robust to the various econometric specifications employed in this study.

Acknowledgment
This study is supported by Kuwait University research sector, grant number IF-03/18.