Opportunity and trust: Europe’s capital market and the Irish funds sector - Speech by Governor Makhlouf at Irish Funds Annual Global Funds Conference

Thank you for the invitation to speak here today. The success of Ireland’s funds sector is well known.  Europe’s second-largest fund domicile and a top-three global player, Ireland now hosts €5.6 trillion in investment fund assets and serves investors around the world. This success is a credit to the industry – the firms and the people in this room –  and has been built on the strong foundations of our regulatory framework, allowing the sector to grow, to adapt, and to demonstrate resilience in the face of significant external shocks in recent years. I will return to that. But first, I want to take a step back, to frame today’s remarks around a question that matters both for this room and beyond: what Europe needs from its capital markets, and what it will take to deliver it. Deeper capital markets matter for growth, for resilience and for households. They matter for growth because the innovative firms that Europe needs to boost productivity are often better financed by risk capital than by bank lending alone.1 They matter for resilience, because risk is spread across borders, firms and sectors and because diversity of funding sources itself enhances the resilience of ...