A number of theories have been employed to explain positions of banks in the corporate networks of developed economies. This article investigates whether these theories are consistent with the empirical findings about banks in the Russian corporate network. Russian banks are subject to many ties created by the executives of industrial corporations on boards of banks. A similar network position is interpreted as an indicator of the power of banks in the US, but this interpretation is not applicable in Russia. This article argues that the network position of Russian banks reflects a subordinate role of banks in today’s Russian economy. This subordinate role is explained by the fact that Russian banks are dependent on large industrial corporations (first of all, exporters of raw materials) as major sources of financial capital. An empirical test of hypotheses about the association between banks’ reliance on different sources of financial capital and their network positions provides support for this context-specific application of the resource dependence argument.
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