national boundaries in the event of a crisis. this insight will affect the thinking with regard to supervision, which should in turn affect the demands made of the banks. perhaps one should ultimately require that each bank is organised so that the national units can operate entirely independent of one another? of course, this is not in line with what has been agreed on up to now in europe with regard to the banks ’ possibility to operate over national boundaries, but it is a natural consequence of not being able to discuss more rational solutions in advance. this reasoning is of course highly relevant to us in sweden, too. we have a number of banks in the nordic and baltic countries that have significant and important cross - border operations. i believe that one can require from both authorities and politicians – in all of the countries concerned – that they should be able to agree on a slightly better way of winding up a bank in distress than cutting it up along national boundaries. but if this becomes an overly heavy political burden we must expect the countries concerned to quite simply take over the part of the bank that is in their own country – even if this solution will be much more expensive in total for the tax - payers. now, however, there is hope. just a few weeks ago the financial stability board, which consists of ministries of finance, central banks and financial supervisory authorities in the g20 countries, published new norms for managing crises in cross - border banks. for instance, they discussed how to make bondholders bear their share of the costs in the event of a crash. when all of this has been translated into legislation that is applied by all of the countries, we will have managed important problems faced in winding up large, cross - border banks. but it still remains to be seen whether one can actually find princples for how the costs should be allocated between the different countries. in the current debate on how much capital the banks need, it may also be worth remembering that the better legislation one has for winding up banks in distress, the less capital they will need to hold. the capital can be regarded as the buffer necessary to avoid tax - payers having to bear the costs in a crisis. if one has regulated how various lenders should contribute, the need for a buffer is reduced. with these reflections, it is time for me to wind up. not just my speech here today, but in a few days my time as a member of the executive board of the riksbank. as i said, it has

is going to fill in an institutional gap in our financial sector, which recent developments have made ever more evident. in a banking sector, which remains relatively well profitable, compared to their european peers, despite the decline in lending to nonfinancial corporations, we need an institution that can help create an environment where banks feel comfortable to extend credit to innovative firms, namely firms that may page 8 of 10 not be able to provide adequate collateral due to the nature of their business, but which are still good business opportunities. besides the development bank, there are other policy measures that should help facilitate the flow of credit. at the central bank we will continue to evolve our credit register to provide more information to banks and help reduce credit risk. more broadly we will continue supporting government in its attempts to reduce excessive bureaucracy and further improve the insolvency process. we will also continue to take macroprudential measures to ensure timely policy interventions to safeguard the stability of the financial system. the struggle against bureaucracy is a key element in the broader effort to improve the ease of doing business in this country. we are pleased to note that the world bank ease of doing business team is finally making serious efforts to understand our national specificities. the central bank urges and supports government ’ s ongoing efforts to take the ease of doing business conditions to a new level. of course, it would be unforgivable of me not to seize this opportunity to urge the consultancy community to ensure that the information we provide to international competitiveness ranking agencies is up to date and factually correct. i also take this opportunity to observe that in 2018, malta will undergo a comprehensive and detailed analysis of its financial sector through a financial sector assessment programme ( fsap ) conducted by the international monetary fund. at the same time, malta will be evaluated against international standards on anti - money laundering and counterterrorism financing ( aml / cft ) by moneyval as part of the council of europe ’ s peer review process. we are eagerly looking forward to both. our economy has managed to outperform because we managed to evolve and diversify rapidly. i believe that our financial services and banking sector needs to mirror this, to continuously evolve and adapt to the changing economy. after the success of recent years, we are now in an excellent position to solidify our gains. this requires us all to focus our glance further into the future, and to devote a greater share of current economic prosperity towards financing more long - term projects.