Ruins to riches

WHEN Estonia's Soviet-era banks collapsed in 1992, the government did nothing. Its inaction spared the country the much longer agonies afflicting Latvia and Lithuania, where similar crises were met with half-hearted attempts to keep hopeless banks in business. From the ruins of Estonia's old banks emerged thriving new ones, forced to live with ample capital and strict regulation. As a result, the country's banks as a group are by far the healthiest in Eastern Europe. But healthy as they are, they face a problem: given Estonia's tiny size, how can they keep growing?