*  *  Introduction  Ladies and gentlemen Thank you for inviting me to speak at today’s ILF Conference on the Banking Union. It is a great pleasure to be here. And again, the ILF has shown impeccable timing: it is six months to the day since we erected the first pillar of the European banking union.
For on 4 November 2014, the ECB became the direct supervisor for the 123 largest banks in the euro area. Together, these institutions account for more than 85% of the aggregate total assets of the euro area’s banking sector. That makes the ECB one of the world’s biggest banking supervisors.