The European Commission is conducting a review of existing rules in all financial services Directives to determine their impact on crossborder consolidation in the EU banking sector. As part of that review, the Commission has asked the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) to evaluate the supervisory process for approving acquisitions of qualifying holdings in credit institutions1).
The Commission has asked CEBS to focus in particular on the criteria used by national supervisory authorities in deciding when to oppose the acquisition of a qualifying holding on the grounds that the acquisition could threaten the “sound and prudent management” of the target institution.
CEBS believes that its advice to the Commission should be informed by the views of the industry on potential obstacles to crossborder consolidation in the EU, and has designed a public questionnaire to solicit input to its technical work. The questionnaire asks the banking industry and other market participants to identify potential obstacles to crossborder mergers and acquisitions in the EU banking sector; to indicate their relative importance; and to comment on their relationship to regulation of the banking sector. Respondents are also asked to identify any legal provisions whose issuance, amendment, or deletion would remove obstacles to crossborder mergers and acquisitions.
The questionnaire is available on the CEBS website at www.c-ebs.org. Interested parties are asked to respond by April 30, 2005.