Иностранные банки и финансовая стабильность в новой Европе

Abstract

В прошлое десятилетие можно было наблюдать беспрецедентную активность международных банков на возникающих рынках; прежде всего в странах Восточной Европы. Быстрое проникновение иностранного капитала приветствовалось в этих странах – кандидатах на вступление в Европейский Союз. Капитал, вливаемый иностранными банками, был решающим для успешности программ приватизации и реструктуризации банковских систем после пережитых кризисов в ряде стран с переходной экономикой. В статье исследуется вопрос влияния иностранных банков на финансовую стабильность. Проведен анализ эволюции деятельности иностранных банков в странах Восточной Европы, а также сравнительный анализ других регионов. В целом эмпирические данные свидетельствуют о нейтральном или позитивном влиянии иностранных банков на финансовую стабильность в странах с новыми рынками. Иностранные банки повышают стабильность объема кредитных ресурсов и уменьшают вероятность кризиса в банковской сфере.

The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the activities of international banks in emerging markets; a trend that has been nowhere more apparent than in accession countries. At the present time, no other emerging region has a higher level of foreign participation in banking and financial markets. Foreign institutions act as market leaders in most accession countries, with two thirds of the assets of the domestic banking systems owned by their branches and subsidiaries. These figures are even more remarkable if we consider the fact that only ten years ago these countries financial systems’ were practically closed to foreign participation2. The fast penetration of foreign banks has been welcomed by accession countries. The contribution of foreign banks was instrumental for the smooth transition of their financial systems. The capital injected by foreign banks was crucial in the success of privatizations programs and the restructuring of banking systems after the crises experienced in some of the transition economies. Although harder to quantify, the impact of the management skills introduced by foreign banks on the efficiency and scope of financial intermediation is also widely recognized. While there is plenty of room for further improvement, size and efficiency were probably the most important objectives of liberalization programs in these countries. As a result, a general consensus that foreign banks have been beneficial for accession countries has emerged in the last years. Now that privatization processes are mostly concluded in the majority of these countries, the attention of bankers and policy makers alike has partially shifted from size and efficiency to stability. Do foreign banks contribute to greater financial stability? Since foreign banks constitute a fundamental part of accession countries’ banking systems, the answer to this question is probably more relevant for them than for any other region of the world. Several theoretical arguments have been advanced for a positive, but also for a negative, role of foreign banks as regards financial stability. Some of them are not entirely contradictory but rather refer to different aspects of financial stability or different forms of foreign bank activities. The existing empirical evidence tends to support the hypothesis that foreign banks have a neutral or even positive effect on financial stability. Nonetheless, more applied research in this area is still needed. It seems that the debate will remain open for some time to come. The objective of this chapter is to summarize the actual state of the debate and suggest some venues for further research that have not been fully considered in previous contributions. The structure is as follows. Section 2 analyzes the recent evolution of foreign bank activities in accession countries, including a brief comparison with other areas of the world. Section 3 reviews the literature on the role of foreign banks in financial stability. Given the scarcity of results for accession countries, inference is sometimes drawn from the findings in other groups of countries. Section 4 concludes and suggests possible directions for future research.