Hungary has been hit hard by the recent wave of bank deleveraging: credit to households and enterprises contracted more than in most other EBRD countries. Why? Three reasons spring to mind.
First, recent BIS data show that –together with banks in Slovenia and Croatia– Hungarian banks experienced the most severe reductions in funding from foreign creditors, including their own parents.… Read more
Authors: Ralph De Haas and Stephan Knobloch , 16 July 2009.
When the global financial crisis hit the transition region, worries among policy makers centred on the local banking systems and the potential for financial contagion from west to east. And when unemployment started to rise and output declined sharply as of Q4 2008, the attention shifted towards the real-economic impact of the crisis.… Read more
‘Banker’ has recently become somewhat of a dirty word and ‘foreign banker’ a most reviled sub-species. Over the last months foreign banks have, amongst other things, been accused of abandoning some of the emerging markets that have contributed so much to their profitability over the last decade.… Read more
Following the release of our latest growth forecasts for the EBRD countries of operations on Thursday, Reuters reported that emerging European currencies had retreated on “bearish EBRD forecasts.”
As the creators of these forecasts, we found this both flattering and dismaying.… Read more
Authors: Piroska Nagy (-7149) and Stephan Knobloch (-7065), 5 May 2009.
New BIS data for the last quarter of 2008 show that BIS-reporting banks significantly reduced their asset holdings across major regions of the world. While in absolute terms most of the reduction took place in advanced countries, in relative terms, emerging markets were hit harder.… Read more
The debates among the G20 leaders about global architecture and the crisis response of the international institutions may seem abstract and removed from the concerns of most people. But the discussions are very real to those of us working in these institutions as we prepare to meet our key stakeholders at our Annual Meetings on May 15-16 in London.… Read more