“Cross-border mergers” between European banks so that they can “actually compete at the scale, at the depth and at the range” of other financial institutions around the world, “including the American banks or the Chinese banks, is in my view desirable”, declared the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, on Monday 30 September at a hearing of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Ms Lagarde was answering a number of...