Creating deeper and more integrated capital markets within the European Union is a central plank of the European Commission’s plans to boost investment, employment and growth for its 28 members.
The Commission’s planned Capital Markets Union has even been proclaimed ‘a new frontier of Europe’s single market’.
“The Impact of Changing Capital Markets on Developing Economies,” one of the panels at this year’s EBRD Annual Meeting and Business Forum in Tbilisi, Georgia, will examine the way the Commission’s proposals – and other changes in the capital market environment – will affect emerging markets and the EBRD’s region in particular.
The Commission’s diagnosis of the ills it is trying to remedy - heavy reliance on banks for investment, significant differences between financing conditions in countries and SMEs’ limited access to finance – parallels the EBRD’s analysis of its own region’s problems.
The EBRD region, however, includes Eurozone members, EU members not in the Eurozone, EU accession states and many countries that are unlikely ever to gain EU membership but still retain close links to the EU, not least for investment flows.
For the Commission, the current fragmented nature of Europe’s capital markets and their division along national lines represent a sharp contrast to deeper and more liquid capital markets, such as the US market where capital markets solutions to problems such as infrastructure finance represent the norm rather than an exception..
The need to improve capital markets across the EBRD’s region has intensified since the financial crisis, when banks and investors have tended to retreat to their home markets. This panel will look at how the Commission’s proposals impact the overall EBRD region and how capital markets can evolve to play a greater role in financing growth.
The Impact of Changing Capital Markets on Developing Economies
Friday 15 May 2015
10:00 - 11:30, Room A, Parliament Building
Moderator:
Ralph Atkins, Capital Markets Editor, Financial Times @RalphAtkins
Speakers:
Giorgi Kadagidze, Governor, Chairman of the Board, National Bank of Georgia
András Simor, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, EBRD
Liviu Voinea, Deputy Governor, National Bank of Romania
William Weaver, Managing Director, Head of EMEA Debt Capital Markets and Syndicate, Citigroup
Topics to be covered at this panel are likely to include securitisation, challenges for pension funds and insurance companies and the role of Central Counterparty Clearing-Houses.
This panel is timely. The consultation period for the Commission’s Green Paper ‘Building a Capital Markets Union’ ends on 13 May 2015 and, over the next few years, much is likely to change in this area of financing.
