Can Banks Promote Enterprise Restructuring?: Evidence From a Polish Bank's Experience

In this paper, we take a detailed look at one Polish bank's experiences with financial sector reforms focusing on a bank-led enterprise-restructuring plan that linked directly bank privatization and recapitalization to bad-debt workouts. Based on personal interviews and original statistical data, we evaluate the performance of Bank Depozytowo-Kredytowy (BDK) in promoting financial and operational restructuring of its clients. We found that BDK continued to provide soft lending to keep four old military-industrial companies afloat and actually increased its exposure to these companies during the program. The five success stories among BDK's clients were companies that had external agents other than the bank promoting and monitoring their operational restructuring. From our case study of BDK, we conclude that, while banks may play a role in financial restructuring of their clients, their ability to affect operational restructuring is quite limited. Moreover, state-owned banks are particularly vulnerable to incentive problems when dealing with large state-owned enterprises that may be too big or too political to fail.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39678/3/wp294.pd

Retail Banking in Hungary: A Foreign Affair?

Over the last decade, Hungary has experienced more foreign bank entry than any country in world, starting with foreign greenfield operations and then followed by the privatization of four of its largest banks to strategic foreign owners. Currently about two thirds of all banking assets in Hungary are foreign owned; the only major bank without a foreign owner is Országos Takarékpénztár és Kereskedelmi Bank (OTP). During a decade in which lending to households declined in real terms until recently and household deposits remained relatively steady at around 20% of GDP, OTP lost its monopoly in retail banking to foreign-owned banks. By the end of the decade, OTP held shares of just over 50% in both household deposit and credit markets. In the last half of the decade, foreign banks increased substantially their market shares and currently hold more than 40% of all household deposits and about 40% of all loans to households. In this paper, we identify the important role played by foreign greenfield operations in intermediation within the household sector, especially from 1997. We provide evidence that, once they take control of formerly state-owned banks, strategic foreign investors move aggressively into retail banking. As the decade came to a close, retail banking was a growth industry in Hungary and foreign-owned banks were actively participating in both markets. Foreign entry provided healthy competition to OTP and prodded this widely held domestically controlled bank to develop new products and better services for Hungarian households. Over the last half of the decade, bank cards have been introduced to Hungarian households and transactions using these cards have grown by a factor of more than five. Over half of the population uses bank cards twice a month on average, almost exclusively for cash withdrawals from their current accounts. By investing heavily in information technology and using its extensive branch network, OTP has become the market leader in this new, growing business with more than 40% of all ATMs and bank cards issued in Hungary and more than 70% of all bank card transactions. Our analysis of OTP's behavior indicates that domestically controlled banks with local expertise may have a significant role to play in retail banking in small, open transition (or emerging) economies.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39740/3/wp356.pd

Dealing with the Bad Loans of the Chinese Banks

Chinese banks suffer from serious financial fragility manifested by high proportions of non-performing loans and low capital-adequacy ratios. A key policy introduced recently by the Chinese government to reduce financial risks is the establishment of four asset management companies (AMCs) for dealing with bad loans. Drawing on the experiences of the Resolution Trust Corporation in the United States and bank restructuring in the Central European transition economies, we argue that the original AMC design will not be successful in resolving the existing non-performing loans (NPLs) nor will it prevent the creation of new bad loans. We recommend a modification of the current proposal that redefines the relationships between the parent banks and the AMCs by transferring the deposits of problem enterprises along with their NPLs from parent banks to AMCs.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39741/3/wp357.pd

Dealing with financial fragility in transition economies

We examine the efforts of transition economies to deal with financial fragility and resolve banking cries We characterize the birthing process of banking in transition and the three essential features of banking crises in transition economies: (i) bad loans and the relationship to state owned industries, (ii) development of institutional infrastructure and (iii) credible commitments to resolution and privatization. We then discuss the experiences of seven important transition countries in order to identify the salient features of their efforts to resolve banking crises.

Retail Banking in Hungary: A Foreign Affair?

Over the last decade, Hungary has experienced more foreign bank entry than any country in world, starting with foreign greenfield operations and then followed by the privatization of four of its largest banks to strategic foreign owners. Currently about two thirds of all banking assets in Hungary are foreign owned; the only major bank without a foreign owner is Országos Takarékpénztár és Kereskedelmi Bank (OTP). During a decade in which lending to households declined in real terms until recently and household deposits remained relatively steady at around 20% of GDP, OTP lost its monopoly in retail banking to foreign-owned banks. By the end of the decade, OTP held shares of just over 50% in both household deposit and credit markets. In the last half of the decade, foreign banks increased substantially their market shares and currently hold more than 40% of all household deposits and about 40% of all loans to households. In this paper, we identify the important role played by foreign greenfield operations in intermediation within the household sector, especially from 1997. We provide evidence that, once they take control of formerly state-owned banks, strategic foreign investors move aggressively into retail banking. As the decade came to a close, retail banking was a growth industry in Hungary and foreign-owned banks were actively participating in both markets. Foreign entry provided healthy competition to OTP and prodded this widely held domestically controlled bank to develop new products and better services for Hungarian households. Over the last half of the decade, bank cards have been introduced to Hungarian households and transactions using these cards have grown by a factor of more than five. Over half of the population uses bank cards twice a month on average, almost exclusively for cash withdrawals from their current accounts. By investing heavily in information technology and using its extensive branch network, OTP has become the market leader in this new, growing business with more than 40% of all ATMs and bank cards issued in Hungary and more than 70% of all bank card transactions. Our analysis of OTP's behavior indicates that domestically controlled banks with local expertise may have a significant role to play in retail banking in small, open transition (or emerging) economies.hungarian banking, retail banking in emerging markets, foreign bank entry

Soft Related Lending: A Tale of Two Korean Banks

In this paper, we present indirect evidence that the IMF’s insistence on foreign control of two large nationwide Korean banks in exchange for short-term support during the 1997 financial crisis helped restrain soft related lending practices. News signaling the likely sale of a bank to a foreign financial institution yields an average daily decrease of about 2% in the stock price of related borrowers. News indicating difficulty in finding an interested foreign investor generates an increase in the stock price of related borrowers of about the same magnitude. These signals have larger impacts on less-profitable, less-liquid, and more bank-dependent firms.Related Lending, Korean Banks, Privatization, Globalization

Dealing with the Bad Loans of the Chinese Banks

Chinese banks suffer from serious financial fragility manifested by high proportions of non-performing loans and low capital-adequacy ratios. A key policy introduced recently by the Chinese government to reduce financial risks is the establishment of four asset management companies (AMCs) for dealing with bad loans. Drawing on the experiences of the Resolution Trust Corporation in the United States and bank restructuring in the Central European transition economies, we argue that the original AMC design will not be successful in resolving the existing non-performing loans (NPLs) nor will it prevent the creation of new bad loans. We recommend a modification of the current proposal that redefines the relationships between the parent banks and the AMCs by transferring the deposits of problem enterprises along with their NPLs from parent banks to AMCs.bad loans, stae-owned banks, asset management companies, China

Can Banks Promote Enterprise Restructuring?: Evidence From a Polish Bank's Experience

In this paper, we take a detailed look at one Polish bank's experiences with financial sector reforms focusing on a bank-led enterprise-restructuring plan that linked directly bank privatization and recapitalization to bad-debt workouts. Based on personal interviews and original statistical data, we evaluate the performance of Bank Depozytowo-Kredytowy (BDK) in promoting financial and operational restructuring of its clients. We found that BDK continued to provide soft lending to keep four old military-industrial companies afloat and actually increased its exposure to these companies during the program. The five success stories among BDK's clients were companies that had external agents other than the bank promoting and monitoring their operational restructuring. From our case study of BDK, we conclude that, while banks may play a role in financial restructuring of their clients, their ability to affect operational restructuring is quite limited. Moreover, state-owned banks are particularly vulnerable to incentive problems when dealing with large state-owned enterprises that may be too big or too political to fail.financial restructuring, operational restructuring, Polish banking reform, bank conciliatory procedures

Privatization Matters: Bank Efficiency in Transition Countries

To investigate the impact of bank privatization in transition countries, we take the largest banks in six relatively advanced countries, namely, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Income and balance sheet characteristics are compared across four bank ownership types. Efficiency measures are computed from stochastic frontiers and used in ownership and privatization regressions having dummy variables for bank type. Our empirical results support the hypotheses that foreign-owned banks are most efficient and governmentowned banks are least efficient. In addition, the importance of attracting a strategic foreign owner in the privatization process is confirmed. However, counter to the conjecture that foreign banks cream skim, we find that domestic banks have a local advantage in pursuing fee-forservice business. Finally, we show that both the method and the timing of privatization matter to efficiency; specifically, voucher privatization does not lead to increased efficiency and earlyprivatized banks are more efficient than later-privatized banks even though we find no evidence of a selection effect.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40065/3/wp679.pd

Banking in transition countries

Modern banking institutions were virtually non-existent in the planned economies of central Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the early transition period, banking sectors began to develop during several years of macroeconomic decline and turbulence accompanied by repeated bank crises. However, governments in many transition countries learned from these tumultuous experiences and eventually dealt successfully with the accumulated bad loans and lack of strong bank regulation. In addition, rapid progress in bank privatization and consolidation took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s, usually with the participation of foreign banks. By 2005, the banking sectors in many transition countries had developed sufficiently to provide a wide range of services with solid bank performance. Recently, banks have switched their focus from lending to enterprises in a somewhat underdeveloped institutional environment to new collateralized lending to households, which accounts for much of the recent growth of credit in many transition countries.transition banking; bank privatization; foreign banks; bank regulation; credit growth