Les banques étrangères dans les pays d’Europe Centrale et Orientale : source de vulnérabilité ou facteur de stabilisation

We study the impact of foreign banks' presence in Central and Eastern Europe's countries on their economic development and on the financial crisis they went through. We show that, despite a certain vulnerability of the domestic banking systems, the consequences of the opening of the banking markets to the foreign banks was globally positive. Thanks to local acquisitions by foreign investors, domestic banks have been recapitalized and transformed into effective and profitable banks with modern methods of risk management. Their access to international financial markets allowed the increase of credit supply and returned this supply less sensitive to domestic shocks. Without this opening the existing financing methods would not have been adequate to the economic development these countries knew the last years. The presence of foreign banks is so identified as a factor of stabilization.