ABSTRACT
By 2007, Eastern Europe had the highest penetration of foreign bank ownership of any region in the world. Nine of the 10 post-communist countries that had joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 or after had foreign bank ownership approaching 70 per cent or above. 1 In several cases, foreign ownership in banking neared 100 per cent (EBRD 2009). Foreign domination in finance to this degree was unusual in global perspective and also represented a major structural difference between East and West Europe. In the latter case, most countries had protected their banking markets from large numbers of foreign entrants, preferring instead to maintain preponderant domestic control (Epstein 2014a; Claessens and van Horen 2015).
