The Treuhand's work of restructuring, privatizing, or shutting down the state-owned enterprises of the former East Germany is almost complete. Never before has such a huge economic transformation been undertaken in so short a time. Although its President, Birgit Breuel, insists that the Treuhand is not a model for others to follow, the lessons of this transformation will inevitably be studied for decades by nations planning market reform. Some of the lessons have already emerged: the need for clarity in goals, timing, and responsibility; the need for simple laws governing work practices, ownership, and contractual obligations; and the proclivity of some buyers to snap up a business not in order to run it, but to exploit the real estate on which it is built.

In this interview, Mrs Breuel discusses the work of the Treuhand: when it was set up; how it acquires information on the companies in its charge; how it overcomes such obstacles as old claims from former owners; how it decides which companies to restructure before privatization, which to sell off as they stand, and which to liquidate; and what legacy the Treuhand will leave behind after the end of this year or early 1994, when...