How will the coming of Europes single currency next year change things for banks and other financial institutions?
The new euro-denominated financial market will give participants a certain critical mass. We will have one single, very broad and totally transparent market for financial services. [But] companies must ask themselves, ‘Are we in the right position to compete? Do we have the critical mass?’ Remember, we’ve had Euro-wide financial transactions for many years. We’ve had the Eurobond market and the Euro loan market. The minimum entrance ticket into the Euro loan market used to be $50 million a couple of years ago. Then it was $100 million. Today it’s a couple of hundred million dollars. That means a number of market participants in the national markets will not be invited into any sort of Europeanwide transactions anymore…. They will be excluded from the big, very important transactions, both on the fixed income and on the private equity side… The question now for each participant is, ‘What is my position in Euroland?’ That’s why we see daily financial headlines about a wave of coopera
