bond markets, hence the efficiency of the european government bond market has temporarily gone down ( see slide 16 ). the role of the dmos after listing the areas in which the government debt management experiences the effect of the financial turbulence. i now turn to discuss in what role the dmos may play in handling the crisis ( see slide 17 ). • involvement in handling the stressed situation in the financial sector • help to ensure state guarantees to secure confidence between financial counterparties – and thaw up the frozen interbank market. • issue sufficient funds to perform the announced recapitalisations of banks. it has been stated that the government ownership through recapitalizations should be a temporary solution. when it comes time to wind up the government ownership of the banks timing can be hard ; should the government for instance sell its shares, when the share prices are high, i. e. in periods of high growth where the government typically does not have a funding need? what lies ahead? ahead of us lies a period, where a majority of the governments in the euro area will experience an increased need for funding, hence higher issuance from sovereign issuers is to be expected ( see slide 18 and 19 ).

. however, i note that several institutions have launched initiatives to safeguard future earnings, and focus is on streamlining operations in order to reduce costs. well - functioning it systems and a tight rein on costs will be key competitive parameters for banks in the coming years. this creates an underlying need for consolidation, also within the financial sector. digitalisation and new legislation give more players access to the market for bank products. from the payments market we know that digital solutions have a tendency to create natural monopolies because it costs less to perform one extra transaction once the digital infrastructure is in place. in recent years, we have seen tech giants, such as apple and amazon, enter the financial market. experience from both the usa and china shows that these firms are extending their original core business to page 3 of 6 include payments and subsequently also financial services such as lending. although it is difficult to predict both short - and long - term developments, the financial sector may be seeing the emergence of new business models in which data and network effects will play a decisive role. as regards the banks'capitalisation, we can see that the largest institutions meet their capital targets, but that excess capital adequacy has shrunk in recent years. this is attributable to increasing capital requirements, while the level of capitalisation has been stable. we note that there is substantial variation in excess capital adequacy across the largest institutions, and in a few institutions it constitutes less than 2 per cent of risk - weighted exposures. this must be deemed to be a low level of excess capital adequacy – not least because capital requirements are expected to increase in the coming years. in our assessment the institutions should reconsider their capital targets so as to ensure an appropriate distance between capitalisation and capital requirements. the need to reconsider capital targets is underscored by the results of our most recent stress test. it shows that a few of the systemic banks will fall short of their capital buffer requirements in a severe stress scenario – even if the countercyclical capital buffer is assumed to be released. the institutions can improve their capitalisation by issuing new capital or by disbursing a smaller share of earnings. disbursements to shareholders in the form of dividends and buy - backs of own shares were historically high in 2015 - 2018. during that period, an average of 86 per cent of the profit for the year was disbursed. this year, it looks as