Cristina Vespro

Block trades and the benefits of control in Slovenia

Ownership and control have been concentrating in most transition countries. The consolidation of control introduces changes in the power distribution within privatized firms and, most importantly, redirects the corporate governance problem to a conflict between large and small shareholders. In this study, we evaluate the ownership changes in Slovenian privatized firms through an analysis of stock price reactions to the entrance of a new blockholder (the shared benefits of control) and through an estimation of the premiums paid for large blocks (the private benefits of control). We provide evidence of and discuss the reasons for the failures of the privatization investment funds in implementing control over firm managers and in promoting the restructuring of firms in the first post-privatization years.

Ten years after the financial crisis: Regulatory reforms and the Belgian Banking Sector

This article reviews the experience of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the principal regulatory reforms that followed, at the international, European and Belgian levels. These reforms have included increases in minimum regulatory capital requirements for banks, improvement of the quality of capital held by banks, broadening of the risks for which bank capital requirements are imposed, introduction of liquidity regulation for banks, introduction of macroprudential policies, and development of frameworks to facilitate the resolution of failed banks without the use of taxpayer funds.Changes in the Belgian banking sector in the ten years following the crisis are examined, and the following outcomes are observed: the size of banks has diminished; leverage has decreased; banks have returned to their core businesses, concentrating on domestic lending; banks’ trading activities have been reduced; holdings of government debt as a proportion of total assets have increased; dependence on wholesale funding has fallen. Most of these developments reflect an enhanced resilience of the banking sector.