AFME is the trade body for Europe’s wholesale capital markets so you could perhaps predict what it would see as the solution to the hole in EU companies’ balance sheets left by the pandemic. Yes, you guessed it: the capital markets.

Over-indebted companies could issue a new EU-wide class of hybrid shares to help fill the estimated €600bn of new capital needed, according to a report by AFME and PwC. The fundraising would prevent widespread defaults and job losses while furthering the European Commission’s plan to expand EU capital markets, it said.