Hungary has reached agreement with both the International Monetary Fund and the European Union on a broad economic rescue package, including substantial financing, to stabilize the Hungarian economy which besides being shaken by the global financial crisis now faces serious population-ageing related macro economic and structural problems moving forward."A substantial financing package in support of these strong policies will beannounced when the program is finalized in the next few days," IMF ManagingDirector Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a statement that did not indicate thesize of the package. Hungary (which is a member of the European Union but not the Eurozone), has been in talks with the IMF since early October in an attempt to sort out a package which will do something to restore confidence in falling markets.Hungary's government and the central bank have taken a series of measures to shore up the ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaHungary's agony continues with both currency and stock markets falling sharply yesterday while bankers continue to report acute credit shortages. At the same time contagion has started to extend its ugly reach right across eastern Europe, with Ukraine, the Baltics and Serbia (at a minimum) all in ongoing negotiations with the IMF, with the credit crunch which has followed in the wake of the global financial turmoil really starting to bite.

"Many central and eastern European countries simply don't have either the financial strength or the technical expertise to bail out banks,'' said Lars Christensen, a senior emerging-markets analyst at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. "It's like an Iceland look-a-like contest and there are a number of candidates looking very fragile at the moment.''

Emerging-market banks plunged this morning after Standard & Poor's warned that Korea's lenders will struggle to refinance ...

Yesterday I posted about new ETF iShares MSCI Eastern Europe (IEER.L). Let’s have a look to key fundamental indicators of countries included in the fund. Russian index RTX, Polish WIG, Hungarian BUX and Czech PX.

Country/Region
DivYld
P/B
P/CF
FY0 P/E
12M
Trailing P/E
FY1 P/E

Russia
0.98
2.24
13.91
13.22
10.35
11.6

Poland
2.78
2.25
9.14
12.73
12.39
11.94

Hungary
2.6
2.37
6.4
10.23
9.83
9.36

Czech Republic
2.96
2.82
8.52
15.49
18.39
13.62

Central European countries provide high dividends. On average dividend yield in Emerging countries is 1.91. Also P/E ratios are better than average. …