Bank Consolidation in Ukraine's Banking Sector, 2008-2026: Number of Active Banks and Foreign Capital Structure
Description
This dataset tracks the number of licensed banks operating in Ukraine each year from 2008 to 2026, together with the number and share of banks with foreign capital participation. Over this period the banking system went through three distinct phases: relative stability at 175-184 banks in 2008-2013 despite weak transparency in ownership; a radical clean-up in 2014-2021 during which the National Bank of Ukraine withdrew licenses from insolvent and non-transparent banks (66 licenses were revoked in 2015-2016 alone, and PrivatBank, the country's largest bank, was nationalized in December 2016), cutting the total from 180 to 74 banks; and a comparatively stable wartime phase from February 2022 onward, during which only seven banks left the market despite the full-scale invasion, including two Russian-linked banks liquidated as part of Ukraine's policy of severing financial ties with Russia. As of the start of 2026, 60 banks operate in Ukraine, of which 26 have foreign capital participation and 19 are fully foreign-owned. The dataset is intended for research on banking sector consolidation, regulatory clean-up policy, and the relationship between market concentration and financial stability, using Ukraine as a case study of both crisis-driven and war-time banking sector transformation. METHODOLOGY & SOURCES Data were manually compiled from official statistics published by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and cross-referenced against Minfin's banking statistics portal. Three derived columns are included for convenience (domestic-capital bank count, foreign capital share, and year-on-year change in total banks); each is a simple, transparent arithmetic transformation of the source figures, documented in the Dictionary sheet. No other adjustments were made. Sources accessed August 2026: - National Bank of Ukraine, Supervisory statistics - Key performance indicators of Ukrainian banks: https://bank.gov.ua/ua/statistic/supervision-statist - Minfin, Number of banks in Ukraine (2008-2026): https://index.minfin.com.ua/ua/banks/stat/count/ FILE STRUCTURE - Ukraine_Banking_Sector_Bank_Count_2008_2026.xlsx - sheet 00_Dictionary defines every variable; sheet 01_Number_of_Banks contains the annual panel, 2008-2026 (19 observations). - README.txt - this file. CONTACT INFORMATION Illia Kyselov, PhD in Law Associate Professor, Department of Law, Bohdan Khmelnytsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine CMSA (R), FPWMP (R), and BIDA (R) (Corporate Finance Institute) Email: illiakyselov86@gmail.com The author is open to collaboration on Scopus-indexed publications and further research using Ukrainian economic and financial statistics. Inquiries regarding this dataset, potential co-authorship, or data requests are welcome. LICENSE CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International). You are free to share and adapt this dataset for any purpose, including commercial use, provided appropriate credit is given.