Financial System Transition in Central Europe: The First Decade

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (CEEC-3) have undertaken substantial efforts to build a new financial system under the constraints of their legacies from central planning. In this study, first we look at the banking sector. Then we give a description of bond and stock markets. These topics are comple-mented by an analysis of the structure of funding for the private and public sector, of the financial sector's vulnerability and of the legal conditions for external finance as well as for banking supervision. We find that the financial sector and financial intermediation are internationally integrated already to a large extent. This implies, inter alia, a non-negligible exposure of the corporate sector to exchange rate risk. While funding via equity markets remained modest, local currency-denominated debt issues are important for public financing. Our analysis shows that the legal, supervisory and regulatory infra-structure of the financial system is formally well developed, but suffers from enforcement problems.