欧盟金融委员Albuquerque公开力挺跨境银行并购与资本市场基础设施「上规模」，同日Euronext CEO对FT重申不排除与德意志交易所合并

Maria Luis Albuquerque, the European Union’s finance commissioner, has thrown her weight behind cross-border banking mergers, arguing that many of the challenges facing the industry are down to a lack of scale.

Big deals between lenders in different member states “should have happened a long time ago — we are in a banking union,” she told Bloomberg in an interview, referring to the long-standing but still incomplete project to integrate the bloc’s banking system. “The strange thing is that they haven’t happened.”

“We do believe that being bigger, operating cross border, ultimately will benefit the clients,” she said. “This is not about the banks for the sake of banks, it’s because we acknowledge the very significant role they play in the European economy.”

While “it’s not for the commission to say whether banks should be big or small,” she said it’s important that “we have a regulatory framework which is not standing in the way of good business cases to gain scale.”

Her comments follow months of wrangling between politicians and bank executives in Germany and Italy over UniCredit SpA’s plan to take over Commerzbank AG. The takeover is seen as a key test of EU banking consolidation, although lenders such as Austria’s Erste Group Bank AG and Spain’s Banco Santander SA — which struck a deal in Poland — have shown that intra-EU combinations can be done.

Albuquerque welcomed the European Commission’s overhaul of merger guidelines, which give more scope for the creation of so-called European Champions and tie-ups that encourage innovation.

“That changed approach is recognizing that the competitive landscape has evolved dramatically and we should look at it in a different way.”

EU competition rules focus on how deals would affect the so-called relevant market they are contesting, and how narrowly watchdogs define it can determine whether deals get blocked or cleared.

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“I would argue that for the financial sector, the relevant market is Europe, because our competitors are big jurisdictions outside Europe.”

The Portuguese commissioner also indicated she favors a scaling up of the EU’s market infrastructure.

“Some businesses can be small and beautiful, Albuquerque said. “Capital markets are not among those. This is a network industry. We need this scale.”

Earlier Monday, Euronext’s chief executive officer toldthe Financial Times he was open to a tie-up with Deutsche Boerse. Shares in both rose.