Foreign Banks, Foreign Lending and Cross-Border Contagion: Evidence from the BIS Data

The paper discusses the role of foreign banks and foreign lending in central and east European countries from the financial-stability perspective using Bank for International Settlements data on global banking. The pattern of foreign bank involvement in the region is analyzed and the risk of cross-border contagion explored, focusing on three topics: the maturity of cross-border exposures, the concentration of foreign creditors, and the existence of common creditors.