In numerous Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, the global financial crisis as well as the unpegging of the foreign exchange rate of the Swiss franc (CHF) against the euro amplified the repayment troubles of households with the outstanding CHF-linked debt. In Croatia, the CHF loans were approved mainly as mortgages to unprotected and subprime household borrowers without sufficient credit capacity for long-term euro-linked loans, which also contained a possibility of an incremental interest rate change, i.e., the so-called administrative interest rate. This article aims to disclose the reasons behind the credit boom of these loans, the unsustainable CHF debt hardship that the household sector consequently faced, and how it was/could have been resolved, with the Croatian banking sector at the center of the research. Although the CHF case of Croatia has some specificities concerning the prudential regulation and government-sponsored loan conversion, the findings about the supply and demand determinants of the CHF credit boom, as well as a critical assessment of the Croatian government and central bank interventions, might be useful for timely noticing universal threats from the exotic currency-linked loans for the systemic risk and financial stability, and for minimizing the negative externalities from probable debt relief measures. Based on the descriptive and univariate statistics conducted on Bloomberg and the Croatian National Bank (CNB) data, it was found that interest rate differentials and carry trading behavior were the main reasons for the rapid CHF credit growth in Croatia. Nevertheless, according to the financial experts’ opinions obtained via a questionnaire survey, and the court verdicts reached since, the financial consumer protection when contracting these loans was severely violated, which implies that the central bank must enhance its consumer protection role. By adopting a single-country and holistic approach, this is the first paper that deals with the socioeconomic dynamic of the CHF credit default issues in Croatia, which might be interesting as a case study or for making comparison with other CEE countries that have been coping with negative consequences of Swiss francization.

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We focus on 32 Croatian banks in the period 2002-2010 in order to investigate the solvency-liquidity nexus. Dynamic panel data analysis is applied on two basic models in which current liquidity ratio and equity to assets ratio are set as dependent variables, interchangeably, and other explanatory variables employed to capture the effect of bank size, profitability and asset quality as well as macroeconomic environment. We found two-way positive relationship between bank solvency and liquidity. However, bank size plays an important role in the capital and liquidity management, and trade-off between the solvency and liquidity level is found for the larger banks. Therefore, policymakers should take into consideration capital and liquidity interdependence, as well as the bank size effect when designing capital and liquidity requirements in order to downsize the regulatory burden for smaller banks, and increase them for larger banks. Namely, larger banks tend to minimize regulatory costs by avoiding simultaneous increase of liquidity and solvency. Small banks do exactly the opposite and stock both, capital and liquidity, what potentially makes their funds allocation sub-optimal, from their own as well as social point of view. Altogether, the paper contributes to scarce empirical evidence regarding bank solvency and liquidity interdependence, particularly when the post-transitional banking sectors are taken into consideration. It adds to knowledge on bank financial management in praxis, and bank managers and prudential authorities might find it relevant for their policies design and implementation.

Regulating bank behavior throughout capital requirements has been a focal point of prudential regulation since the late 1980s. However, their beneficial effect on the banking sector's safety and soundness was disputed ever since their initial implementation, mainly due to an assumption that they deteriorate bank profitability and increase the odds for the enlarged risk appetites of bank managers, especially in the highly competitive financial markets. On the other hand, bank profitability is driven by many factors other than compliance with capital regulation. Concerning that, a question about the capital requirements' impact on bank profitability was raised in this paper. The dynamic panel data analysis served to examine the consequences of bank capital regulation for the Croatian banking sector profitability, by taking into observation 24 commercial banks in the 2011-2016 timespan. The impact of capital regulation on the return on assets and net interest margin was positive, while for the return on equity a negative relationship was found. It was concluded that banks transfer regulatory costs on their clients, which was approximated with the net interest margin. In addition, results reveal that the overall bank profitability is achieved at the expense of bank shareholders. Thus, a more cost-efficient approach to managing a bank is suggested.

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