Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Cyril Roux:

I will take your question in a slightly broader context. The European economy is mostly financed through bank lending, and that's different from, as we know, the US economy which is mostly financed through market funding. So the capital markets union, that is one of the primary objectives of the current EU Commission is to grow market funding and you grow market funding by using non-banks - it is exactly the definition of that, it means through the issuance of securities, including equity. I think it's a good thing that there is more finance through equity finance rather than debt finance. And we have too much debt finance in the economy and that exposes more risk. You can always decide not to pay a dividend, but you have to pay your coupon. If you don't pay it you are defaulting.