Lagarde defends advancing in the capital market union as a result of the Ferrovial case

The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, today underlined the importance of moving towards a European Capital Market Union.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
02 March 2023 Thursday 05:27
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Lagarde defends advancing in the capital market union as a result of the Ferrovial case

The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, today underlined the importance of moving towards a European Capital Market Union. A measure that would put an end to the current fragmentation and that, according to the French company, can respond to the needs of large European companies.

During an interview on the Antena 3 program "Espejo Público", when asked about the possibility of Ferrovial transferring its registered office from Spain to the Netherlands, Lagarde declined to comment on the case of the company chaired by Rafael del Pino. However, she has commented that this case "convinces her even more" that we must fight for the union of the European capital market.

In this sense, he pointed out that the private sector is organized according to the existing rules and in the case of large companies, they seek to expand their markets and diversify their market share and access liquid capital. "Europe has a fragmented market (...) Companies have to do a lot of things when they want to go public, they have different legal frameworks, different banks and also different tax rules," Lagarde argued, while admitting that progress are not performing “as fast as” as you would like.

In this way, for the president of the ECB, once Europe has a "synchronized, updated and adjusted" capital market, it will be possible to access a market with harmonized rules, a guaranteed framework for operating and going public in Europe and in United States.

The Spanish company Ferrovial announced on Tuesday that it plans to move its headquarters to Amsterdam to be listed in the Netherlands and apply for listing in the United States. The company ensures that the measure responds to its objective of gaining international projection, since most of its business is generated outside of Spain.