Final Word from Friday, May 13, 2005
A monopoly is a terrible thing, Rupert Murdoch said, until you have one. This goes double for oligopolies, because they don't draw as much attention. The government created the Big Three bank oligopoly in the 1990s with its "banking socialism" policies and let the party at ČS, ČSOB and KB go on for a decade before crashing it yesterday, when the antitrust office raided the banks looking for proof of a cartel. Chances are slim it will find anything, unless perhaps one of the CEOs took notes on a napkin during a lunch at the Money Club. The Big Three don't need to collude; like the mobile operators, they were handed a sure market by the government. They merely needed to avoid a price war to keep their profits high. Judging by the antitrust office's recent actions, a fine can be expected, but it will say more about the government's policies than the banks'. [Czech Republic News Corporation česká spořitelna Českosloveská obchodní banka Komerční banka Erste KBC Societe Generale competition]