CEE’s best bank transformation 2016: Citadele Banka

Results index Thanks to high levels of foreign ownership, banking sectors in CEE saw few sizeable failures during the financial crisis. Latvia’s Parex Banka was the exception. Locally owned and heavily dependent on wholesale funding, it suffered a run on deposits after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and had to be bailed out by the state. Large portfolios of bad debts were subsequently hived off into a bad bank and the relatively healthy rump was reborn as Citadele Banka in March 2010, which is the winner of this year’s best bank transformation award for CEE.