These developments are all the more important for us at the ECB since we take great care to ensure that our exceptional policy measures do not have an irreversible impact on market structures. More generally, we have not yet seen negative rates have a major impact on market makers themselves – in particular via the topical channel of banks and their profitability.
I can only repeat here what the ECB has already said on several occasions, namely that banks’ profitability has actually improved when you look at the overall impact of our monetary policy, thanks to a combination of lower funding costs, increased lending volumes and lower loan-loss provisions, which dominates by far the direct cost of negative rates.