In the light of this, progress towards the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union emerges as a priority for Europe. The financial crisis taught us that the quality of financial integration matters. Risk sharing through the financial system can go into reverse, and banks can amplify and propagate rather than tame economic disturbances.
In that publication, we noted that limited evidence suggests that income trusts can enhance market completeness in a couple of ways. First, income trusts can provide diversification benefits to investors, because trusts can have different risk-return characteristics than either equities or bonds. Second, the income trust structure appears to allow some firms improved access to market financing.