On Monday, November 9, much of Europe will be celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the catalyst it provided for the collapse of Communism on the continent. BMI’s Justin Patrie explains the significance of this event for Emerging Europe, and what the outlook is for the next 20 years [Read more...]

 

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Business Monitor’s Emerging Europe team has been cautious regional financial markets over the past several weeks, holding a neutral position across asset classes in the company’s in-house market portfolio since June 12. The long equity positions the team had held through the end of March to early June continue to look shaky amid technical signs [Read more...]

Business Monitor’s recent downward revision of its 2009 Hungarian economic growth forecast to -6.4% well reflects my view that the systemic crisis risks I have been highlighting since Q308 have morphed into the region’s core scenario. While small economies like the Baltics and frontier markets such as Ukraine have long been forecast to contract in [Read more...]

This Halloween has proven particularly ghoulish for Serbian borrowers. On October 31, the National Bank of Serbia became the second European central bank in as many weeks to hike rates sharply, raising its policy rate by 200bps to bring it to 17.75%. This followed the National Bank of Hungary’s October 22 decision to hike its [Read more...]

Literally within minutes of returning from an emerging Europe investment conference where the ad nauseam theme was that the ‘economic fundamentals are essentially sound’, I learn that the National Bank of Hungary has hiked its policy rate from 8.5% to 11.5% to prop up the currency. Well, the fundamentals must be sound if a central [Read more...]

At a recent eastern European banking sector conference, I was struck by the lack of doom and gloom among many of the fellow delegates. Yes, there was expressed concern about falling share prices and declining asset growth, but there was also an almost mantra-like quality about the way I was repeatedly told: ‘the fundamentals are [Read more...]