Rather, what matters for growth is the overall level and quality of financial services produced by the entire financial system. In particular, legal and regulatory systems play a key role in determining growth-enhancing financial services. My own view, to summarize, is that financial structure does not seem to matter much for growth. We should view financial intermediaries and markets as complementary components in a diversified and comprehensive system of financial intermediation. •  Competition for allocating financial flows and risks enhances economic efficiency. Financial competition is threefold: (i) within the intermediary-based system (banks, mutual funds, insurance companies…), (ii) between intermediaries and markets in a given country and (iii) between national financial systems. •  Financial intermediaries are also key market participants. They contribute to the effective functioning of markets. Banks, in particular, are the ultimate providers of liquidity; a function which is essential in ordinary times and can become critical in periods of stress. •  This is why a diversified financial system can help and absorb shocks and, in most extreme circumstances, mitigate the consequences of financial crisis. Financial crises have occurred in countries with differing financial structures, suggesting that the specific organisation of the financial system does not matter. Yet, I will quote Alan Greenspan 5 who argues that “multiple alternatives to transform an economy’s savings into capital investment act as backup facilities should the primary form of intermediation fail. In 1998 in the United States, banking replaced the capital markets.

1.1 Naturally, it is on the euro money market that the highest degree of integration can be found, as a result of the unification of monetary policy, and thanks to the efficiency of the cross-country largevalue payment system that support it, i.e. the TARGET system. Interest rates differentials between what are nowadays regional deposit markets have quickly vanished following the advent of the euro and the “law of one price” applies to the transactions conducted within a deep and highly liquid euroarea wide market. The recognition granted to money market reference rates such as EONIA and Euribor, the sheer development of derivatives markets based on these references - the OIS-based swap market and Euribor futures and options contracts, the impressive increase in cross-border transactions are illustrations of this already well-advanced, if not already completed unification. On the inter-bank market, cross-border transactions conducted with EU counterparties represent more than 50% of the whole inter-bank euro deposit business. Similar developments are recorded in the  BIS Review 32/2003  1  repo market: the increasing share of non-domestic euro area collateral in transactions combined with the growing use of tri-party agreements, as well as the share of cross-border transactions - which is more than 50% - provide clear evidences of an increasingly integrated market. 1.2 Changes have also been impressive, albeit more contrasted, on the securities markets. The euro had clearly stimulated the rapid development of the corporate bond markets.