Wimmer, Manfred --- "Banking in South-East Europe: the case of Erste Bank" [2005] ELECD 400; in Liebscher, Klaus; Christl, Josef; Mooslechner, Peter; Ritzberger-Grünwald, Doris (eds), "European Economic Integration and South-East Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: European Economic Integration and South-East Europe

Editor(s): Liebscher, Klaus; Christl, Josef; Mooslechner, Peter; Ritzberger-Grünwald, Doris

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845425173

Section: Chapter 25

Section Title: Banking in South-East Europe: the case of Erste Bank

Author(s): Wimmer, Manfred

Number of pages: 5

Extract:

25. Banking in South-East Europe:
the case of Erste Bank
Manfred Wimmer

I would like to react to some of the terms ­ and their counterparts ­ used
in the other contributions to this section. One of those counterpart pairs is
foreign banks versus domestic banks. I do not share that thinking. That is
not a category for Erste Bank as a group. We very much like to think about
our operations in, presently, Central Europe and Croatia, as domestic
banks. These banks of course happen to have a foreign owner in the same
way as the majority of our shareholders are non-Austrians. Yet we define
markets as our home markets and this is what we mean; we feel at home
there and this is where we see our faith and destiny. We are a company listed
on the Vienna stock exchange which has a market value at present of
roughly EUR 9 billion. If you look at the distribution of this market value,
50 per cent of our market value is represented by our business in the
Czech Republic, a further 15 per cent by our business in Slovakia, a further
15 per cent by our businesses in Hungary and Croatia and a mere 20 per
cent of our total enterprise value is represented by our business in Austria.
Now guess where we feel at home? I do not think that in attitude and per-
ception there is a huge difference between a bank with foreign owners and
a ...