The aim of this paper is to check the hypothesis regarding the influence of the ownership structure on the successful operation of the banks in the Republic of Croatia. The paper will examine the widely believed that only foreign banks have good business results on the Croatian market. Since the subject of analysis and state-owned banks, the paper will be verified how does a state manage a bank which is still property of the state (twenty years after the transformation has been done)? In order to check a set hypothesis, and for the given business indicators to be comparable, banks were selected based on the ownership structure. Croatia banka d.d. is owned by the state, while the other two banks are a private property (Istarska kreditna banka Umag d.d. is privately owned by the local investors and Podravska banka d.d. is privately owned by the foreign investors). In addition to the ownership structure, another important determinant when choosing a bank was the size of the assets, which are determined indirectly by the size of the assets controlled by the state. Business analysis is based on the publicly available financial reports of the three banks who conduct business in the Republic of Croatia, from year 2007 to 2015. Throughout the monitored period a vertical balance sheet analysis, horizontal analysis of the profit and loss account, calculation of productivity indicators and profitability, and the analysis of the reservations for the partially and completely chargeable credits regarding the credit portfolio were performed for the selected banks.