On September 3-4, 2009 SUERF and Utrecht University School of Economicsorganized the Colloquium "The Quest for Stability" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium.

The establishment of the European Banking Union in 2014 created a large banking market in Europe, making it easier for banks to straddle borders and expand their business to other European countries. We use a unique hand-collected dataset with cross-border loans for the 61 largest European banks...

Written for undergraduate and graduate students of finance, economics and business, the fourth edition of Financial Markets and Institutions provides a fresh analysis of the European financial system. Combining theory, data and policy, this successful textbook examines and explains financial...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, governments are rightly reducing their exposure to the banking system. Bail-in arrangements should ensure that shareholders and creditors take the first losses. The next line of defence is a resolution fund, which is filled via levies on banks....

Institutional investors, as professional parties, typically hold geographically diversified portfolios of marketable securities. In that way, institutional investors contribute to financial integration and risk sharing in Europe's Capital Markets Union and beyond. Assets managed by institutional...

This paper reviews the state of the banking sector in Europe. At the aggregate level, the empirical data suggest that the Baltics, Cyprus, Greece and Ireland, in particular, are hit by a strong decline in lending in the wake of the financial crisis. This deleveraging is mainly caused by a...