Even a mushroom cloud has a silver lining. And as investment bankers pick through the wreckage of the financial crisis in the European markets some of them can see a glimpse of the Holy Grail they have been searching for in Europe for decades: a capital market as deep and as wide as that in the US.

With much of the European financial system still paralysed by high funding costs and too much leverage, it may seem paradoxical to even think of the further development of capital markets. But greater disintermediation could be exactly what the European economy needs, and the crisis could be the unlikely trigger to push it in the right direction.