This share is still comparatively modest and increasing only slightly. Of the almost EUR 500 billion worth of intra-EU mergers and acquisitions in the financial sector between 1999 and 2004 only about 20% were cross-border deals.
These values are all notably different from the central tendencies of the projections for 2010 and 2011, reflecting the view of policymakers that a full recovery of the economy from the current recession is likely to take more than two or three years.