that said, fintechs are the talk of the town but bigtechs are the real deal. on the one hand, frankly, fintechs already had a huge and positive impact on the financial sector by developing new solutions and proving that these solutions bring value. however, overall, with a market capitalization of $ 125 bn worldwide, fintech start - ups have been 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches so far more a complement to existing financial actors, through integration or partnership, than irresistible rivals to incumbents. on the other hand, the market capitalization of the gafa – google, amazon, facebook, apple – is 25 times higher than that of the whole fintech universe. the bigtechs already have a material footprint in financial services1 and competitive advantages to expand their activities further in this area. on top of massive financial resources able to support investment at scale and an undeniable digital agility, they benefit from strong brand recognition, worldwide customer base on which they have accumulated proprietary database and privileged access to forefront technologies. in that context, bigtechs more than fintechs have the potential to fundamentally redefine financial intermediation beyond the universal banking model toward integrating financial services within a universal ecosystem. such a move is already gaining considerable traction in china. and it is raising very fundamental questions to which i will come back. to conclude my first point, digital finance may not lead to a more decentralized system as the centripetal forces of network effects may profit most to large conglomerates. rather than eliminating intermediation, if left on its own, digital finance will more likely lead to reshuffling the cards with the most digitally agile incumbents and the most financially able challengers becoming the new dominant ( and potentially systemic ) intermediaries. ii. a common challenge : rethinking old issues, investigating new ones this leads me to my second point. the digitalization of finance forces us to revisit old regulatory and supervisory questions and to face new ones. among old issues to revisit, i would like to highlight two of them. first, the question of the financial regulation perimeter. consider for instance icos and crypto - assets : even though they don ’ t bring something new in terms of types of risks2, the existing regulatory framework may be inadequate to address the challenges they raise. the classification of tokens into existing legal categories proves very challenging and the internetbased crypto - intermedia

bank of france reports industrial output continued to increase in all sectors in february 1997 bank of france, monthly business survey, 17 / 3 / 97. in february, according to the business leaders surveyed by the banque de france, industrial output continued to increase in all sectors. the capacity utilization rate rose slightly. overall demand grew at a moderate pace. there was strong demand from foreign markets, particularly from northern europe, including germany and the united kingdom, and from the united states and asia. the rise in the dollar and in sterling reinforced the competitiveness of french products. growth in demand on the domestic market was much more moderate. order books are deemed to be satisfactory in all sectors, with the exception of the food - processing industry, where they declined slightly and appear to be insufficient. inventories of finished products are still somewhat above normal levels. in particular, they are considered to be above desired levels in the food - processing, intermediate goods and automobile sectors. in the coming months activity should continue to increase in all sectors, with the exception of the automobile sector. commodity prices were stable overall. however, price rises were recorded in certain parts of the intermediate goods industry, such as the rubber and plastics, metal - working, and wood - processing sectors, and in the food processing industry owing to the appreciation of the dollar. intense competition prevented these increases from being passed on to sales prices, which scarcely changed, except in the automobile sector, where they declined. the business leaders surveyed continued to be cautious in their investment plans. there were few plans for large - scale investment, and they mainly concerned the renewal of modernization of existing equipment. retail sales contracted in february, after posting a substantial rise in january. employment levels remained stable in industry, except in the automobile sector, where they declined. the retail and market services sectors showed little change, but employment fell in the building industry. increasing use was made of flexi - time, annualized working time and part - time working to respond to variations in demand.