Bank Mergers & Acquisitions in Central Eastern Europe

Bank M&As in Central Eastern Europe An intensified competition is taking place in the international financial markets influenced by technological changes and to a great extent the increased integration of financial markets. Throughout the 1990th one has seen a large process of financial consolidation in the European Union due to the implementation of the single market for financial services in the beginning of the decade and more recently the introduction of the Euro. With continuously high economic growth in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and the expansion of the European Union towards east, a similar process of consolidation is now taking place in this region. Banks play an important role in such a process, where especially foreign banks have been active on the CEE market helping in the transition of the economies and improving efficiency in the financial sectors. This book analyses, in retrospective, the expansion of Raiffeisen International AG’s expansion into CEE with a focus on the challenging task of valuing potential acquisition targets.