It is a great pleasure to be here tonight to share with you my views on the importance of competitive EU financial services markets. Nobody understands better than corporate treasurers how important efficiently functioning, competitive financial markets are to businesses and long term economic growth. Over the last six years, the Commission has taken up the challenge of integrating European financial markets, to grow them and to maximise their strength and impact on the real economy so as to be able to lead rather than to lag globalisation. It is not an easy challenge, but we have come a long way: the adoption of the Financial Services Action Plan has been a milestone in this respect. Comparing EU financial markets today to those of our main competitor, the US, European markets are, for example, clearly leading in the areas of commercial banking, forex, OTC derivatives, insurance, reinsurance and foreign equity trading. In addition, in relative terms, our markets have considerably gained in importance over the past five years in the areas of investment banking, hedge funds and IPOs. As the major European financial centre, London is contributing in an important way to this success. In 2005, London registered the highest numbers of foreign IPOs. It also represents close to 25% of the EU primary insurance market and 45% of the EU's private pension fund market.