Turning to financial globalisation, indicators of international financial trade increased from the early 1990s until the global financial crisis and have essentially moved in proportion to global output growth since then (Chart 4). Chart 4 Evolution of external assets (percentage shares of world GDP)  Sources: External Wealth of Nations database (Lane and Milesi-Ferretti) and ECB staff calculations.
While we applaud these developments, we hope that the guidance we are developing will help further increase awareness, among both banking organizations and their advisers, of sound practices in this area. I would like to note that the guidance the agencies issue should be considered the first step in the evolution of sound practices for complex structured finance transactions.