Financial Services Privatisation: Two Case Studies

Abstract

How Romania’s, and Estonia’s, financial services sectors moved towards, and through, their respective privatisation processes provides sharply contrasting scenarios. For a long time Romania’s following up of a promise made to the International Monetary Fund was simply an unimpressive record of dithering. By contrast, Estonia’s performance was a generally positive account, one which was based on norms and structures which were often comparable to those in advanced industrial countries. This paper examines in detail these two national experiences.