We compare characteristics of cooperative and non cooperative banks at world level in a time spell including the global financial crisis. Cooperative banks have higher net loans/total assets ratio, lower income from non traditional activities and lower shares of derivatives over total assets than non cooperative banks. From an econometric point of view, we find that the cooperative bank specialization has a positive and significant effect on the net loans/total assets ratio in the overall sample period and in the post financial crisis subperiod. Derivatives (both in terms of assets and revenues) have a quantitatively strong and significant negative effect on the same dependent variable during both time spells. We finally document that, in a conditional convergence specification, the net loans/total assets ratio is positively and significantly correlated with the value added growth of the manufacturing sector with the exception of the two extremes of self-financing sectors and sectors in high need of external finance.