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 Vincent J. Derudder
Honorary Chairman
Crisis in Europe?
Europe is going through a very serious crisis and so is the EU financial services industry.
To focus on some basic indicators, the world today is made up of a homogenous block of four dominant countries (the US, Russia, India and China) representing 4 billion people and guided by four strong authoritarian leaders - versus a Europe of 500 million people without a real leader, only professional politicians without vision.
When speaking at a conference in Mumbai (India) earlier this year, I paid a courtesy visit to the Indian Financial Services head regulator to whom I explained briefly where we were up to in terms of regulation; his comment was very simple - we have 1.5 billion people to feed and no time for these fantasies!
Therefore, our Financial Services industry is not competitive anymore and most of the business goes to Singapore or Hong Kong.
As an example, the average size of an investment fund in the US is 5 times the size of a European fund and the cost of compliance is 50% less…
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