Financial Markets In Europe

By and large, EU financial integration has been a success story. Still, the reform agenda is far from finished. What are the remaining challenges? What are the gains of closer financial market integration? This IMF book tracks the European Union's journey along the path to a single financial market and identifies the challenges and priorities that remain ahead. It pays particular attention to the most recent integration efforts in the European Union following the introduction of the euro. The study looks at the importance of financial integration, in particular for economic growth, the interplay between banks and markets, and equity market integration. It closely examines the relationship between financial integration and financial stability. This interaction presents the European Union with a challenge, but also with the opportunity to play a pioneering role in developing a regional approach to financial stability that could provide lessons for the rest of the world.

Capital Markets Union in Europe' analyses the legal and economic aspects of the plans for a Capital Markets Union (CMU) in Europe, which will have a major impact on financial markets and institutions both in the region and beyond.

Between 1995 and 2007, financial elites in more than a dozen western European countries engaged in a cross-border battle to create some twenty new stock markets, many of which were explicitly modeled on the American Nasdaq. The resulting high-risk, high-reward markets facilitated wealth creation, rewarded venture capitalists, and drew major U.S. financial players to Europe. But they also chipped away at the European social compacts between national governments and citizens, opening the door of smaller company finance to the broad trend of marketization and its bounties, and further subjecting European households and family businesses to the rhythms of global capital. Elliot Posner explores the causes of Europe’s emergence as a global financial power, addressing classic and new questions about the origins of markets and their relationship to politics and bureaucracy. In doing so, he attributes the surprising large-scale transformation of Europe’s capital markets to the rise of the European Union as a global political force. The effect of Europe’s financial ascendance will have major ramifications around the world, and Posner’s analysis will push market participants, policymakers, and academics to rethink the sources of financial change in Europe and beyond.

Contains essays by historians of economic and financial history. It illuminates the relationships between government indebtedness and the development of financial markets in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the late twentieth century.

Written for undergraduate and graduate students of finance, economics and business, this textbook provides a fresh analysis of the European financial system. Combining theory, empirical data and policy, it examines and explains financial markets, financial infrastructures, financial institutions, and challenges in the domain of financial supervision and competition policy. Key features: • Designed specifically for courses on European financial integration • Clear signposting and presentation of text with learning objectives, boxes for key concepts and theories, chapter overviews and suggestions for further reading • Broad coverage of European financial system – markets, infrastructure and institutions • Explains the ongoing process of financial integration, in particular the impact of the euro • Examines financial systems of new member states • Uses up-to-date European data throughout A companion website will be available with exercises and freely downloadable solutions.

Provides fresh analysis of the European financial system for undergraduate and graduate students of finance, economics and business.

This very useful volume provides a ‘ground up’ survey, from a business law point of view, of the concept of finance as a vital component of the economic structure of the European Communities. In deeply informed detail it describes the architecture of the financial system, its institutions (banks, stock exchanges, etc.), the variety of financial instruments, the progress of liberalisation and harmonisation initiatives in Europe, relevant EC legislation, regulation of capital markets and securities, the development of international financial law, and the management of legal risk. The authors are all outstanding authorities in the field, with extensive experience both as practitioners and academics in many European countries and elsewhere in the world. The essays in this book grew out of lecture courses delivered under the auspices of the PALLAS Consortium organised by nine universities in seven EU Member States. Among the wealth of material covered, the reader will find, among much else, precise and interrelated explanations of the following: the transferring, sharing and insuring of risks; relevant contractual arrangements; the intermediation and distribution functions of financial institutions; primary markets versus secondary markets; money markets versus capital markets; stock market ‘players’; the role of letters of credit; pension funds; and the management of payment systems; The book is especially valuable for its middle way between a ‘top down’ EU regulatory perspective and a strictly national framework—a method that supports and reinforces a practice-oriented approach corresponding to the ‘real world’ in which domestic and cross-border aspects of financial services are inevitably intertwined. Practitioners and business law students will find the book extraordinarily useful for its expert guidance and insight in clarifying many situations involving financial services and in resolving typical problems.

European Financial Systems in the Global Economy provides an overview of sources of finance, types of financial intermediation and financial systems in Europe and their relative importance in the world economy. It describes market mechanisms and prices and gives a broad introduction to the relevant regional financial and monetary issues (including those countries that will join the EU in the future) and makes an ideal primer for those new to the world of finance.