28.01.2020  Multilateralism and globalisation reforms Presentation of the book Excesos: Amenazas a la prosperidad global, by Emilio Ontiveros Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  Good evening Honourable Minister and Authorities, ladies and gentlemen. It is an honour to be here at the presentation of Professor Emilio Ontiveros’s book Excesos: Amenazas a la prosperidad global (Excesses: Threats to global prosperity), and to share some thoughts with you on the subjects it addresses. As has habitually been the case in his extensive academic and popularised work, Professor Ontiveros hits the nail on the head in his analysis of one of the main challenges posed by the current international landscape: the characterisation of and the risks associated with the economic and financial globalisation witnessed in recent decades. His work is immense, as it requires deep-seated knowledge of the wealth of interrelated factors that shape the highly complex and changing economic, political and social situation at present. As is also habitual for the author, he is successful in his venture: he presents a profound and well-structured analysis of the issue. And one that is, moreover, reader-friendly and comprehensible. Our congratulations, Emilio. 1. The book’s main line of argument As Professor Ontiveros rightly says, the globalisation and growing openness of economies to the flow of trade, finance, persons and knowledge, lauded by many just some years back as the fundamental driver of global economic development, is now questioned by significant economic, political and social agents, at least in its current form.
These include better risk management, a modern range of products offered to customers, or the development of new distribution channels, to name just a few. Regional integration within the EU, however, means that the application of a uniform bank or insurance licence (i.e. taking up activity in any Member State under a licence obtained in the home country) may cause certain asymmetry in the availability of data and a conflict of interest between supervisors of the host country on the one hand, and institution owners and supervisors from the home country on the other. Such conflict may occur as a result of transformation of foreign bank subsidiaries, operating under local laws and fully supervised by the supervisory authorities of the host country, into branches supervised by foreign supervisory authorities. Individual foreign bank branches operating in the new EU Member States frequently constitute a vital element of the banking system, both in terms of the value of assets and deposits, operations on the domestic interbank market and the share in settlements in the payment system. Therefore, they are described as institutions of systemic importance for the domestic market. At the same time, they are not always equally important components of an international banking group, in terms of their size and the profit generated. In such a case, a relatively low importance of an institution may result in less focus on its supervision, both by the foreign bank and the supervisory authority of the home country in which the given bank has obtained its licence.