This in turn can improve systemic financial stability. Achieving it will mean that our legislation must be balanced and fair to all. It will mean striking a balance between giving markets the freedom to innovate and integrate whilst ensuring investor confidence and proper consumer protection. This will be difficult but certainly not impossible, and it is the only route to success. Success will mean being clear about the obstacles that face us, and how to overcome them.
Most equity trading remains nationally based.
This is hardly helping deliver the efficient match between firms looking to raise capital and savers looking to invest. Let me give you an example. The current system for prospectuses provides no detailed common rules for the set of documents to be used or the languages that they must be supplied in. As a result, issuing a prospectus in another Member State remains a highly complicated, expensive and drawn out process, getting in the way of European entrepreneurs looking to raise capital on European markets. In the same way, gaps can appear.