Incoming EU Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services & Capital Markets Union, Jonathan Hill says he hopes to build a capital markets union that ... supports green bonds. True!

Incoming European Commissioners have to run the gauntlet of European Parliamentary committees to be confirmed in their jobs, a bit like nominated senior officials of the US Administration.

The new European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union is Jonathan Hill, former leader of the UK House of Lords. Today at 13:00 CET he'll be having a second round of live grilling by the Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. In preparation he's submitted some written answers to questions asked, including about his “vision of a well-regulated and integrated” Capital Markets Union.

I found this interesting quote:

"The case for building a Capital Markets Union is very clear if we want to rekindle growth, create new jobs and build a dynamic, diversified and resilent market for the future....

Developing market financing does not mean reducing bank financing – indeed there is scope to increase it. It means expanding and diversifying the funding available for growth and jobs....

Building on these foundations, my priority would be to achieve the following three objectives:

  1. create a single market for European financial instruments to help foster funding for SMEs and long term projects (such as securitisation, private placement, covered bonds, personal pensions, green bonds or European Long Term Investment Funds) and facilitate SMEs’ direct access to capital markets;
  2. deepen the single rulebook where necessary and possible ....; and
  3. make full use of the current supervisory framework to improve supervisory convergence, provide investor protection and ensure greater transparency and centralisation of information neded for supervision."

I think I like this guy!