  10  Visa Europe, based in the UK and a subsidiary of Visa Inc, executed all 18.9 billion Visa transactions in Europe in 2015. These peaked at 2,000 transactions per second in the pre-Christmas period. 11  And third, although each of the pipes is distinct and serves a discrete purpose, they operate together to provide a seamless global network of functions that Michael Godfrey could not have imagined. The operations behind a routine financial transaction – issuing corporate debt, adjusting a pension fund portfolio or hedging against the risks of commodity price increases – will typically involve a wide range of financial market infrastructure firms over many jurisdictions (see diagram A). 8  https://www.cmegroup.com/company/files/cme-group-overview.pdf http://www.eurexclearing.com/clearing-en/about-us 10 http://www.swapclear.com/what/clearing-volumes.html 11 https://www.visaeurope.com/enabling-payments/processing 9  5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  Diagram 1: Example of an international commodity hedge  Diagram 2: Example of equity issuance  6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  These global pipes have proved pretty robust. In the last crisis financial market infrastructure proved resilient, including during the most testing time of Lehman’s collapse. But their use is growing, in part because they increase efficiency and lower cost – and in part because they reduce risk and authorities have mandated market participants to use them. 12  In line with this, post crisis, authorities internationally agreed that there needed to be a corresponding increase in the regulatory expectations of FMIs.

Public expenditure increased by 0.9%, y-o-y, mostly reflecting the negative growth rates of capital spending. As a result, the budget deficit of this period marked 8% annual decline. The fourth quarter highlighted a better pass-through of monetary stimulus in financial markets. It was also characterised by a better anchoring of interbank market rates and their decreasing volatility. The Bank of Albania has pursued an easing monetary policy during the last three years. The monetary stimulus has increased progressively during this period, bringing the key interest rate to record low levels and mitigating the liquidity pressures on the interbank market. However, the pass-through of easing monetary policy effects on the economy has been contained due to higher perceived risk premia and changed stance by financial market agents and the real economy. Over the first half of the year, the domestic primary market faced structural changes arising from implementation of new tight measures by the European Supervisory Authorities. This development impacted on maintaining relatively high yield rates, despite the easing monetary policy and lowering short-term interest rates in the money market. Normalisation of the primary market in the second half of the year was reflected in progressively falling yields over this period. This tendency might have been passed on to ALL-denominated private sector credit costs, though with lower intensity as a consequence of risk premia reflected in private agents’ credit price.