'. . .Sevic offers an accessible and closely argued account of financial sector reform processes in Southeast Europe. Sevic's book is the result of an extensive research project on banking sector reform in the Southeast European transitional economies undertaken since late 1998. . . an extensive look at this timely volume will pay handsome dividends and could help devise successful business plans.' - Jens Bastian, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 'The book will be a very agreeable reading to experts on the region. Its comprehensive analysis emphasises past and current conflicts, the recourse to currency board arrangements, and the persisting asymmetries with reference to the functioning of the banking system in Central Europe. . . Banking Reforms in South-East Europe is a book that college students in banking and financial markets, and banking analysts should read.' - Bruno S. Sergi, South-East Europe Review Banking Reforms in South-East Europe gives a critical and detailed overview of banking system restructuring in the transitional countries of South-Eastern Europe - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Yugoslavia - and offers suggestions for future reforms.

This study analyzes the main requirements placed on Central and Eastern Europe's financial systems during their transition to a market economy. It assesses the financial reforms already carried out in the countries of Central Europe, their adaptations of Western institutional models, and the lessons to be drawn from their experiences for the "second wave" reformers in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

The book examines in depth the progress of reform in the banking sector in Eastern Europe - which is a key element in its transition to the market. Particular emphasis is placed on the problem of bad debts owed by companies to banks, and on criteria and options for overcoming this serious problem. The book also analyses the recent development of capital markets in Eastern Europe, their role in attracting foreign capital flows and the limitations to the development of those markets and suggests how to overcome them. Based on analysis by senior policy-makers and academics from the region , the book focuses on four countries: the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech and Slovak Republics), Hungary and Poland.

Covers the different ways in which financial systems have changed and been developed in Central and Eastern Europe during the recent upheavals and collapse of communism. Banking is examined in the protomarket period; for independence in the transitional economies; and in liberalization.

The effectiveness of banks in the transition depends on how soon authorities begin to restructure the banking system and how that restructuring fits into the sequence with enterprise restructuring and privatization.

The manuscript covers the complex issues of the banking systems in Central and Eastern Europe during the crisis period and the institutional and legal reforms adopted in the banking area in the last years. The book is structured in three parts. Part I presents the structure of the banking systems in the Central and Eastern Europe area. Part II covers the developments of the banking systems in this area during the crisis. Part III presents the reform of the regulations in the banking area as a result of the crisis.

At the beginning of the transition process, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe faced the task of creating a functioning financial system where none had existed before. A decade later, high-level practitioners and well-known experts take stock of banking and monetary policy in the region, centring on: the governance of banks; the spread of financial crisis; and, perspectives for monetary policy and banking sector development.

"The book contains a collection of articles on the European Union and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), the Eurosystem, monetary law, central bank independence and central bank statutes as well as on financial law. The authors are current or former members of the Legal Committee of the ESCB (LEGCO). This book commemorates ten years of work by the Working Group of Legal Experts of the European Monetary Institute and by the LEGCO. It is dedicated to Mr Paolo Zamboni Garavelli, former Head of the Legal Department at the Banca d'Italia and member of LEGCO, who died in 2004."--Editor.

During the last years of its life the Soviet Union turned to law like a dying monarch to his withered God. Its successor, the Russian Federation, has adopted the same posture. In public discourse the phrases civil society and law-governed state have acquired hortatory force, the judges are bidden by law to wear robes, and the Congress and the Supreme Soviet enact and amend statutes with the fervor of one who sees in legislation the path to paradise. (Bernard Rudden, Civil Society and Civil Law, The Revival of Private Law in Central and Eastern Europe.) Somewhat less dramatically, perhaps, the picture is repeated throughout the rest of the post-communist constituency.