Good morning. It is a pleasure to join you today for the annual conference of the European Capital Markets Institute.
I will start today with something that might seem a little removed from capital markets. And that’s LEGO: a product that has inspired generations of children (and adults) to build everything from trucks to 35-meter-tall towers.
What makes LEGO so remarkable is not the sophistication of any individual brick. It is how they connect with each other. That ‘integration by design’ has been a core foundation supporting creativity and innovation over decades.
But there is also another lesson from LEGO. Anyone who has tried to build an elaborate LEGO structure will know that connecting the pieces together is only half the battle. The other half is making sure that the structure itself stays standing. That also requires strong foundations, but of a different kind. Foundations that support resilience and stability.
Today, I want to talk about foundations in capital markets. Two marked, and inter-related, shifts are shaping the future of finance and require a strategic response from Europe. The first is the emergence of tokenised finance. The second is the continued expansion of non-bank finance. The common thread running through these is building foundations that support integration, resilience, innovation and trust in our capital markets.