Towards Efficient Public Sector Asset Management

Governments are accountable for providing quality public services to their citizens at the most favourable terms. They are, among other issues, responsible for managing a diversified public asset portfolio. This paper examines one of the critical financial challenges in Croatia: managing public sector assets efficiently. It attempts to facilitate better understanding of public asset management as an integral part of public sector reforms. The lack of reliable information on public assets in place hinders determination of the assets’ value, budgeting for asset management activities and evaluating public asset portfolio performance. As a result, assets are managed on an ad-hoc, often reactive basis. Starting from the concept that public authorities have to be fully accountable to the public, we propose the preconditions necessary for commencing proper public asset management practice in Croatia. Our model might help other countries that are also faced with public asset management inefficiency.public sector assets, centralised asset registry, accrual financial reporting, professional asset management, Croatia

Corporate Motives for Public Shares Offering During the Financial Crisis

Abstract Despite greater constraints for obtaining bank loans, public shares' offerings ceased in the SEE region since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. With scarce IPOs and SEOs as well as debt offerings, Croatian capital market stands as prime example of mandatory shares' listing rule application. Surveys of CFOs on going-public vs staying-private decisions are rare even in developed countries and are mostly conducted during the hot IPO markets. In this paper the motives of shares' issuance are compared between publicly-and privately-held companies during the financial crisis. Research results showed that companies would not issue shares to the public to raise funds for their investments and growth