Abstract
Co-operative Credit Institutions, in Cyprus, were created in 1909 to save people from usurers and loan sharks, and have grown ever since. As a result of the financial crisis of 2013, and the subsequent lending of Cyprus by Troika, Co-operative financial institutions were forced to merge reducing their number from 100 to just 18 while 99 % of their ownership was passed to the Cypriot state as exchange for a capital injection of 1.5 billion euros and their supervision was passed from the Co-operative Societies Supervision and Development Authority to the Central Bank of Cyprus. Additionally, the Independent Commission on the Future of the Cyprus Banking Sector recommends the merge of all 18 Co-operative institutions to a single legal entity and its disposal to a foreign bank. It is the author’s view that, if this happens, the true non-for-profit nature of Co-operative financial institutions will change and their members and the greater society will suffer, as the counterweight to investor owned banks that keeps them in balance will be removed.
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Kleanthous, A., Hadjimanolis, A. (2016). Co-operative Credit Institutions in Cyprus. In: Karafolas, S. (eds) Credit Cooperative Institutions in European Countries. Contributions to Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28784-3_2
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