The European banking groups have grown considerably, mainly as a result of mergers, with 30% of the groups of institutions under review having assets of more than € billion. The foreign presence of these groups is on the increase, both in terms of the number of EU countries where they have a foreign affiliate and in terms of their share of external assets.
These average 38% of the consolidated group assets, 14 percentage points higher than the figure for 2003! Big differences exist between individual countries, with the share of external assets ranging from 16% in the case of Greece to 65% for Italy. The value for a total of eight countries is equal to or above the average.