P34 - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions: Financial EconomicsReturn

Privatization of the Czech banking sector was not an ideal process. Many errors and failures could be mentioned. The role of national banking for the raising of national entrepreneurial class was overvalued. There was also a broad naiveté about a great interest of potential investors. Also the timing of privatization of Czech banks is a topic for a discussion: It is complicated to deduce when was the optimal time for privatization but the majority of economists concluded that the banks were privatized too late. Privatization led to the following results: At the end of the process there is a standard banking sector in the Czech Republic as well the prices from privatization were the best prices (measured by price/NAV) from all of the transition countries. The cost of trans- formation of the Czech banking was extremely high. The text is focused mainly to the procedural problems of the Czech banking privatization.