State-Owned, Acquisition Or Greenfield Banks In The New Eu Member States. A Post-Crisis Analysis

The political and economic changes taking place at the end of the 20th century have provided Western European banks the opportunity to enter into Central and Eastern European (CEE) markets. Their entry was made either by greenfield investment or by acquisition of existing domestic banks. The motivations for the entry decision were various, e.g. managerial decisions, tightening profit margins in home markets, challengers imitation, profit-maximizations, looking for new customers in new markets, or keeping and extending relations with existing customers on the new markets where they are implanted. The expansion was amplified by the deregulation, the global capital expansion and the emergence of a single currency, throughout a period of prosperity and economic growth lasting for almost two decades (1990-2008). Until the crisis, changes in the CEE banking markets mainly concerned the increasing share of foreign capital (in market share, assets, number of branches and employees) along with the diminishing importance of state-owned banks. After 2008, the process displays new features: the restructuring of banks, mergers or strategic acquisitions, reducing operations in certain countries or even exits, adjusting the number of units and employees, improving efficiency and profitability indicators etc. Domestic banks, both private and state-owned, have bridged the gap (at least in terms of efficiency) separating them from the leaders, i.e. mostly the subsidiaries of large international banks. Apparently, greenfield banks are losing the importance they had in the preceding period (1990-2008). This paper aims at investigating the relation between foreign banks’ mode of entry into the emerging markets of CEE (i.e. acquisition vs greenfield) and the strategies’ results on those markets, before and after the crisis. Although foreign banks have implemented common strategies at group level, often dependent on the entry mode, these strategies were influenced by the specific features of the host markets and, quite frequently, by transformations occurred within home markets. We found that the entry is relevant for the development of the banks, but less than in the previous period, i.e. when banks entered the emerging markets of CEE.