Secondary Privatization in the Czech Republic: Changes in Ownership and Enterprise Performance in Voucher-Privatized Firms

Abstract

This volume contains the output of country research undertaken in the Czech Republic in 2000–2001 by EvDen Kocenda and Juraj Valachy (CERGE) under the international comparative project 'Secondary Privatization: the Evolution of Ownership Structures of Privatized Enterprises.' The project was supported by the European Union's Phare ACE* Programme 1997 (project P97-8201 R) and was coordinated by Barbara Blaszczyk of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) in Warsaw, Poland. The support of the ACE Programme made it possible to organize the cooperation of an international group of scholars (from the Czech Republic, France, Poland, Slovenia and the U.K.). The entire project was devoted to the investigation of secondary ownership changes in enterprises privatized in special privatization schemes (i.e., mass privatization schemes and MEBOs**) in three Central European countries – the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia. Through a combination of different research methods, such as secondary analysis of previous research, analysis of legal and other regulatory instruments, original field research, statistical data base research and econometric analysis of individual enterprise data, the project aimed to investigate the scope, pace and trends in secondary ownership changes, the factors and barriers affecting them and the degree of ownership concentration resulting from them. Following the presentation of a clear picture of the economic outcomes of the voucher privatization in the Czech Republic, the paper turns to the initial changes in ownership structures of privatized companies. The main types of new owners are identified and the emerging trends of ownership concentration analyzed. The second part of this publication is devoted to a description of post-privatization transactions and their influence on the further re-allocation and concentration of ownership. The interconnection between secondary changes in ownership structure and economic performance of a sample of companies traded on the Prague Stock Exchange is investigated using various econometric instruments.