François Villeroy de Galhau: The consequences of Brexit for the French and European financial sectors Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de resolution (ACPR), at the ACPR conference, Paris, 23 November 2018. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to welcome you along with Bernard Delas to this new conference organised by the ACPR, which this morning will focus on the consequences of Brexit for the financial sector. This issue is admittedly constantly evolving in line with current events... I welcome the agreement that was reached between the European negotiators and their British counterparts last week and we all hope that it will pass through the stages to come and ultimately be finalised. However, in a context that remains uncertain, we must be cautious: even if we hope to avoid it, we must also be ready for a possible no deal scenario. The ACPR and the Banque de France are preparing for this eventuality to ensure the smooth functioning of the financial system. That will be my first point and for that reason I will discuss it using the conditional. I would then like to look beyond Brexit to see how we can transform some of today’s difficulties into opportunities for the future and build a more integrated “financial Eurosystem”. ** I.
Of course, by its very nature clearing is an activity that generates major economies of scale, and thus encourages concentration. But greater competition is absolutely necessary to stimulate financial innovation. Fortunately, LCH SA will centralise repo transactions at the beginning of 2019. More generally, we would like to see the development in Paris of an enhanced and extended clearing services offering in the area of interest rate derivatives. More broadly, Brexit represents an opportunity for Europe to effectively transform its own savings, in order to enhance its ability to finance the real economy: what I call the Financing Union for Investment and Innovation. This involves better steering the euro area’s abundant savings to absorb shocks within the euro area more effectively and to meet investment and innovation needs in fields such as digital technology, energy transition and the equity financing of SMEs. In practice, the creation of a true Financing Union requires the acceleration of the Capital Markets Union and the completion of the Banking Union. The second pillar on the resolution of failing banks is more important still than a possible common deposit guarantee scheme. And it is essential to remove barriers for pan-European banks. This was the policy agenda of the FrancoGerman declaration in Meseberg in June 2018: but I insist on the urgent need to make it a reality today.