The president of CaixaBank, Tomás Muniesa, has defended that the European banking union is essential and has urged to "truly believe" in the community project.
He made these statements this Tuesday during the 41st Cercle d'Economia Meeting, which takes place from Monday to Wednesday at the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya, in a conversation with the Director General of Economy of the Bank of Spain, David López.
"We are all aware that the European reality is that we do not believe in Europe. That is the big problem," he pointed out, also emphasizing that the European Union acts too slowly when making decisions.
He indicated that there are no large pan-European banks on the continent because the financial sector is conditioned by 27 different jurisdictions: "We talk about Europe, we say it is the future, but we do not bet on great European leaders, great leading European companies."
In this regard, he criticized the talk of creating European champions while each state intends for those champions to be its own companies, and stressed that the development of single markets requires a certain cession of national sovereignty.
Business Financing and Company Size
Muniesa stated that, to address the smaller stock market size of European companies, one of the ways is to introduce more flexibility in investment funds and pension funds.
He detailed that, in the United States, pension funds channel around 20% of savings and that they "invest a lot of money and invest it very diversely."
"Unfortunately, in Europe, the pension fund industry is much smaller, and that engine that helps growth and financing is missing," he added.
As another lever to improve financing, he proposed to lighten the regulatory burden, since, as he indicated, it has caused "markets to be not very agile."
How Savings are Invested in Europe
López stated that "Europe saves enough, but it has an allocation problem" for those resources, since, although European citizens save more than Americans, their investments are concentrated in low-risk and low-return products.
In this regard, he considered that in Europe "there is a deficit in risk-taking" in investment, something he sees as essential to boost 'startups' and 'scaleups' with growth potential.
The general director has rejected that in Europe there are fewer business initiatives than in the United States and has underlined the need to advance in the creation of assets and instruments capable of channeling available savings, indicating that this should be "priority number one".
Likewise, he has defended that the current regulatory framework must serve to prevent a similar episode to the 2008 financial crisis from being repeated and has specified that "more than a regulatory problem, it is a problem of fragmentation" of the rules among the 27 member states of the European Union.