The emerging economies considered in this book – China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Indonesia, North Africa – were key players in the unprecedented international economic integration of the last decades. The World Bank forecasts that in 25 years emerging economies will represent about 33% of the world GDP. Their increasing population and high saving rates make them very attractive markets for bank lending and deposit-taking.

However, in spite of their success, emerging economies feature various fragilities. Their chief inefficiency pertains to the financial system, especially banking, posing serious constraints to their growth. Given the increased interdependence of financial markets and institutions, such inefficiency has repeatedly led to centripetal financial crises, draining investments from the periphery to the core of the world financial markets. Today, the key issue is whether bank reforms have made emerging countries resilient to the subprime crisis that, initially, was centrifugal; driving investments away from the most developed financial markets. Against such a scenario, the authors provide an in-depth analysis of emerging banking systems