EBRD blog

Postcard from Davos

An EBRD delegation took to the Swiss Alps this week for the traditional World Economic Forum in Davos. An annual get-together of the great and the good, it’s the sort of place where you can’t walk more than 50 yards …

Where does the Eurasian economic community stand?

What is the Eurasian Economic Community, where does it stand and how will it likely evolve? There have been significant recent developments in terms of economic integration in parts of the CIS and the regional integration project of Belarus, Kazakhstan …

Exchange market pressures in the EBRD’s countries of operations

The new bout of the global economic uncertainty and falling demand in the core markets have recently increased external pressures on the economies of the Bank’s countries of operation. We want to measure exchange market pressure in the recent turbulence …

Durban Platform: Breakthrough or Procrastination?

After two weeks days of intensive and hectic negotiations, the representatives of 194 nations unexpectedly agreed to a last-minute global deal which sets a road map for negotiating a new global legally binding regime. For the first time, this ‘Durban …

Is it time to write off group loans?

Microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending to individual lending. Yet, there is not much rigorous evidence on the borrower impact of both types of microcredit to either substantiate or challenge such a strategic shift. We present some such evidence from a randomised field experiment in Mongolia.

Short film competition: the impact of water

Films by the two finalists in the TVE / EBRD short-film competition are now posted on Youtube, where viewers are invited to cast a vote to decide the eventual winner.

The category of the competition sponsored by the Bank was …

How did multinational banks weather the previous perfect storm?

Multinational banks across the world, but in particular in Europe, are experiencing severe balance-sheet pressures. Barely recovered from the 2008-09 sub-prime crisis, asset quality is now battered by banks’ exposures to sovereign risk in the euro-zone periphery. The European Banking Authority (EBA) has consequently instructed banks to increase core tier 1 capital to 9 per cent by mid-2012. This means that banks either have to raise a substantial amount of new equity, not easy in the current climate, or have to reduce their risk-weighted assets (i.e. to deleverage). International banks are also experiencing difficulties in rolling over maturing bonds. This further constrains their ability to lend, both at home and abroad. According to Morgan Stanley, banks may need to get rid of USD 3,300 billion of assets over the next couple of years. What does this imply for the host countries where these banks are operating branches and subsidiaries? This blog post presents the results of a recent working paper (De Haas and Van Lelyveld, 2011) in which Iman Van Lelyveld and de Haas compare the lending of stand-alone domestic banks with lending by multinational bank subsidiaries. We focus on the 2008-09 financial crisis, the previous ‘perfect storm’ that hit multinational banks.

Film-making competition: meet the finalists

Earlier this year we worked with TVE to sponsor part of their Biomovies competition, an initiative that invited film-makers to create short films on environmental themes.

It has been a huge success with many more entries than last year’s …

On the move in Taipei

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving” (Lao Tse)

Ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tse might have been writing of the plight of many of today’s commuters. I know this, for public transportation is the …

South-Eastern Europe: lacking in confidence

By Marija Kuzmanovic and Peter Sanfey

Of all the EBRD’s sub-regions, south-eastern Europe (SEE) has been the slowest to emerge from the crisis. One reason behind the sluggish recovery is undoubtedly a general lack of confidence throughout the economy. This …