When companies brandish maps of their conquests, trouble usually follows. For some west European banks in recent years, the cartography in question tracked their efforts to hoover up lenders in central and eastern Europe (cee). Depending on how this area is defined-some stretch it as far as Kazakhstan-up to four-fifths of bank assets are foreign-owned.rnThe global crisis has abruptly ended eastern Europe's credit-fuelled boom. Estimates of output have slumped and currencies have dropped as capital inflows have dried up. Credit-default swaps on sovereign debt, which measure the risk of default, have risen, generally to more alarming levels the further east you go. When governments are at risk of default, banking systems typically get into deep trouble. The contagion has thus hit western banks with high exposure to cee (see chart), and the countries where they are headquartered. Austria, which hosts Raiffeisen and Erste Bank, has loans to the wider region of €230 billion ($293.5 billion), equivalent to about 80% of Austrian gdp. Austria's government-bond yields have risen close to the levels of Italy, the euro zone's habitual miscreant. Worries that the euro zone will have to bail out its eastern cousins have hit the single currency.
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