Selective Approaches and Experiences with Problematic Assets in Banking Sector

This paper analyses various approaches to dealing with problematic assets of the banking sector. These approaches include the establishment of an asset management company, capital injection and sale of the bank, purchase and assumption transactions, liquidation or bridge bank. All these approaches are evaluated with respect to Czech transformation experience and with respect to experience of other foreign countries. The paper concludes that the establishment of Czech Consolidation Agency (Czech Consolidation Bank, respectively) was the least suitable approach to dealing with problematic assets in the Czech banking sector during the period of the transformation. The paper furthermore suggests that other methods, such as the liquidation accompanied with deposit insurance payments, publicly assisted mergers and acquisitions, or finally privately or publicly assisted purchase and assumption transactions should have been used instead. The knowledge of these alternative approaches to weak-bank restructuring is supposed to guarantee that Czech authorities will not step up to establish a similar inefficient asset management company, should banking-sector problems emerge once again.

Keywords: banking, Czech Consolidation Agency, problematic assets