This article reviews recent literature on the relationship between foreign ownership and bank performance. Five groups of performance indicators (profitability, cost control,quality of assets, efficiency and market-based measures), four cases of foreign ownership measures (one or more foreign dummies, foreign ownership percentage and number of foreign bank entries), and four different methodologies (t-test or ANOVA, cross-sectional regression, panel data regression and Censored Tobit Regression) are found to be commonly employed. The sample data are drawn from developed/industrialized, developing, transition, and crisis-experienced countries. The findings on the relationship between foreign ownership and bank performance are not clear-cut. Results of some developed countries support the home field advantage hypothesis and findings from some European transition countries support the global advantage hypothesis, whereas the study of Chinese banks suggests no short-term or long-term impact of foreign ownership on bank performance. This implies that the relationship really depends on the context.