We have observed a marked  5  6  Acharya, V. and S. Steffen, “Falling Short of Expectation? Stress-Testing the European Banking System”, (2014); Kashyap, A. commentary on similarities between EU and Japan; Kashyap, A. et al. “How does financial regulation change bank credit supply?” (2014). BIS central bankers’ speeches  increase in banks’ capital ratios since the beginning of 2009.
Since the onset of the global financial crisis, the top 20 European banks have increased capital in dollar amounts, net of share buy-backs, by much higher numbers than the corresponding top 20 American banks: USD 289 billion by EU banks against USD 179 billion by US banks.