Past Events
From a historical perspective, interest rates have been on a downward trend over the past four decades. In Europe, the financial and sovereign debt crises and the ensuing weak macroeconomic environment – persistent output gap, low growth and excessively low inflation – together with the expansionary monetary policy responses, in particular QE, have contributed to a further decline in interest rates.
The Annual Conference of the European Capital Markets Institute (ECMI) is a landmark event in Brussels, bringing together policy-makers, academics and international experts to discuss salient issues in the integration of EU capital markets and global financial reform.
Financial market infrastructures (FMIs) are the backbone of the financial system: they enable market participants to transact with one another in an efficient manner. FMIs are inherently systemic, as their very names imply: payments systems, central securities depositories (CSDs), securities settlement systems (SSSs), central counterparties (CCPs) and trade repositories (TRs).
The financial sector is no stranger to innovation. Nevertheless, over the past few years, the exponential growth of FinTech companies suggests that more disruptive changes will be required in order to bring the financial system fully into the 21st century.
In the context of the capital markets union plan, the European Commission proposed an initiative to re-launch securitisation, with harmonised rules across the EU for a subset of standardised offerings, and with CRR amendments to adjust capital charges to provide for a more risk-sensitive treatment for such instruments.
Afer the successful launch in Brussels (3 February) and London (21 April, in cooperation with Imperial College London), the final report of the European Capital Markets Expert Group (ECMEG), titled 'Europe's untapped capital market: rethinking integration after the great financial crisis' will now be presented in Paris, Milan and Madrid. Please follow the links below for more information and registration.
Building on the success of our inaugural scene-setting Capital Markets Union Summit last May, this event is the first in a series of ECMU implementation events which we plan to hold every six months over the next two years, with the programme in each case focusing on those initiatives that are current at that point (e.g. on recently launched consultation or discussion papers and legislative proposals).