The Governance Of Privatization Funds

Privatization investment funds are the key feature of mass privatization programmes in transitional economies. This book offers a thorough survey of mass privatization programmes in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, supported with extensive empirical analysis. The study of 'top-down' privatization funds in Poland and 'bottom-up' funds in the Czech Republic and Slovenia offers different solutions to the problem of how to improve the governance of privatization funds.

Governance, as defined by the World Bank in its 1992 report, Governance and Development, is the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources for development. The report deemed it is within the Bank's mandate to focus on the following: -the process by which authority is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources -the capacity of governments to design, formulate, and implement policies and discharge functions. Also available: Governance: The World Bank's Experience (ISBN 0-8213-2804-2) Stock No. 12804.

The most likely outcome of the strategy of voucher privatization with investment funds may be a two-sided grab fest by fund managers and enterprise managers-along with drift, stagnation, and decapitalization of the privatized industrial sector.Common wisdom among post-socialist reformers has been to use voucher investment funds to provide the corporate governance needed to restructure newly privatized enterprises after mass privatization efforts. The idea has been that mass privatization would spread the ownership too wide and make corporate governance difficult.Ellerman examines the likely institutional behavior of voucher funds and the possible effects of their development on a transition economy. Since most policy advice has been in favor of voucher privatization with investment finds, Ellerman can be seen as playing the devil's advocate, but his argument is institutional, not statistical. Policymaking requires insight and foresight into how institutions will tend to function.He concludes that voucher funds will introduce a bias in the economy away from the real industrial sector toward an ersatz financial sector that will have little if any positive financial role but will be well-protected by friendly regulators.One long-term consequence of voucher privatization with investment funds, according to this view, is a de facto industrial policy of real sector decapitalization in favor of short-term rent-seeking by fund managers through board sinecures and lucrative side deals with portfolio companies and through financial market manipulation and paper entrepreneurship in the financial sector.Without strong corporate governance from the funds and without stable ownership of their own, many enterprise managers will exploit the post-socialist version of the separation of ownership and control to grab what they can in the form of salaries, bonuses, perquisites, and side deals.The most likely results of the strategy of voucher privatization with investment funds may be a two-sided grab fest by fund managers and enterprise managers-together with the accompanying drift, stagnation, and decapitalization of the privatized industrial sector.This paper - a product of the Office of the Senior Vice President, Development Economics - is part of a larger effort in the Bank to define policymaking using institutional analysis. The author may be contacted at [email protected].

The volume focuses on privatisation in transition countries, addressing issues ranging from corporate governance to the relationship between privatisation and the emergence of markets, from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The contributors investigate both the theoretical groundwork of privatisation and enterprise restructuring as well as recent empirical evidence. The contributions show that changes in ownership titles are but one part of the story, being closely interwoven as they are with the transformation of corporate governance, enterprise restructuring, network transformation and the emergence of markets.

Policy makers and privatisation experts agree that it is critical to “get privatisation right.” A well-planned and executed transaction, backed by sound rationales, institutional and regulatory arrangements, good governance, and integrity can have consequences on future divestment activity by enhancing investor confidence while gaining the support of stakeholders and the public.