Brussels faces long haul boosting capital markets despite Brexit fillip

Brussels faces long haul boosting capital markets despite Brexit fillip

One of the more dramatic self-inflicted wounds from Brexit has been the shift of share trading activity out of London, underscored by news this week that Amsterdam has overtaken London as Europe's largest share trading centre. 

But high-profile gains for the Netherlands shouldn't disguise the arduous task the EU faces as a whole if it is to capitalise on the UK's exit from the single market and bolster the fortunes of its own financial centres. 

In Brussels, the centrepiece of this strategy is the long-promised Capital Markets Union, which aims to unclog cross-border investment flows and boost access to finance for European companies. 

A blog post on the CMU to be published on Friday morning by two authors from the European Stability Mechanism, the euro's crisis-fighting fund, does not lack ambition. 

The report, prepared by the CMU's chief financial officer Kalin Anev Janse and Rolf Strauch, its chief economist, calls for a dramatic enhancement in the supervisory powers of two existing European regulators, the European Securities and Markets Authority and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority. 

The two bodies should be given a leading role in defining regulations over areas such as green and digital finance, the authors argue. The bodies should see enforcement