Mongolia’s banks have listed – now for the hard part

A landlocked Asian frontier state squeezed between a former global power at war with its neighbour and a modern superpower suddenly lacking economic momentum would seem an unlikely place to go looking for ambitious policymakers bent on transforming an archaic banking sector.

But then Mongolia always did do things a little differently. In January 2021, when the central bank published an amended banking law, two particular demands stood out.

First, it required each of the five domestic systemically important banks (D-Sibs) to list a minimum of 5% of their shares on the local stock exchange by June 2022.