February 1995 In Central and Eastern Europe, banks are less active than planned in enterprise restructuring. Corporate restructuring is not normally a major part of commercial banking -- to ask banks to restructure their weakest clients is to direct attention away from lending to their strongest clients, which should be their core business. Enterprises are thus being restructured not by banks or government agencies but by brutal market forces. Many countries in Central and Eastern Europe assigned banks the responsibility for restructuring enterprises. Such restructuring had five components: * Triage of enterprises into three classes: viable, viable with debt relief, and nonviable. * Work with management of overindebted firms on a restructuring plan beforegranting debt relief. * Trigger the bankruptcy-liquidation process on nonviable firms. * Fund new investments needed as part of physical restructuring. * Provide corporate governance through representation on boards of directors. The initial information is that banks are performing these roles only to a limited degree. Signals are mixed on how vigorously governments want banks to pursue bankruptcy proceedings. With little opportunity to recover funds, banks are accepting even dubious restructuring programs from enterprises. But banks, except under government directive, are avoiding making new loans to loss-making enterprises. Together with a cut in fiscal subsidies, this is imposing a harder budget constraint on the enterprises. Nonviable enterprises seem more likely to starve to death than to die through execution. Corporate restructuring is not a normal part of commercial banking. To ask banks to restructure weak enterprises is to direct their attention away from what should be their core business: lending to strong enterprises. In fact, banks are under attack for being excessively conservative. Enterprise restructuring is taking place in Central and Eastern Europe driven by the disintegration of regional trade relations, sharply higher input prices, falling domestic demand, inflation, and other economic dislocations in combination with the harder budget constraint. Thus far the restructuring has been more downsizing than making new investments. This paper -- a product of the Financial Sector Policy and Institutions Unit, Financial Sector Development Department -- is part of a larger effort in the department to study the role of banks in restructuring.

Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.

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.

Ten countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic (CEECs) are candidates to join an enlarged European Union (EU) in the years to come. The ten are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. This enlargement will bring many opportunities to the both the EU and the candidate countries. For the EU it will bring enhanced weight and influence. For the candidate countries it should mean an improvement of their long term growth prospects by providing access to an open single market. The accession process is providing the impetus for the acceleration of much needed economic, political, institutional and social reforms in some of the CEECs as they strive to meet EU membership requirements. The key for the CEECs is to achieve sustained, high long-term growth in order to meet their ultimate objective of accession. The EU has already concluded agreements with the CEECs which went beyond the narrowly conceived ideas of market access to include the alignment of the CEEC economic system with that of the EU's. This report sets out the future agenda for the successful integration of the CEECs into an enlarged EU. The first priority is for each country to complete its own process of transition to a free market democratic state. In short this will mean that many will have to address: their fiscal challenges, and ensure fiscal sustainability; the challenge of global financial integration, opening of their capital accounts; the strengthening of their administrative capacity; the reduction of unemployment; and the promotion of social inclusion.

The volume focuses on privatisation in transition countries, addressing issues ranging from corporate governance to the relationship between privatisation and the emergence of markets, from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The contributors investigate both the theoretical groundwork of privatisation and enterprise restructuring as well as recent empirical evidence. The contributions show that changes in ownership titles are but one part of the story, being closely interwoven as they are with the transformation of corporate governance, enterprise restructuring, network transformation and the emergence of markets.

In light of the periodic financial crises of the late 1990s, there has been a growing recognition of the need for a strategy to avoid and mitigate the severity of crises in the corporate sector, requiring the complementary efforts of policymakers, regulators, lawyers, insolvency experts and financiers. This publication examines the issue of corporate restructuring, drawing on case studies of corporate crises in Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand among others; and discusses a range of topics including the key role of governments in securing an enabling legal system, effective out-of-court workouts, supportive tax regimes, policy and regulatory initiatives to address systemic corporate problems.

Usually associated with large bank failures, the phrase too big to fail, which is a particular form of government bailout, actually applies to a wide range of industries, as this volume makes clear. Examples range from Chrysler to Lockheed Aircraft and from New York City to Penn Central Railroad. Generally speaking, when a corporation, an organization, or an industry sector is considered by the government to be too important to the overall health of the economy, it will not be allowed to fail. Government bailouts are not new, nor are they limited to the United States. This book presents the views of academics, practitioners, and regulators from around the world (e.g., Australia, Hungary, Japan, Europe, and Latin America) on the implications and consequences of government bailouts.