The favourite sport of European bureaucrats this year has been to publish long and repetitive investigations, consultation papers and questionnaires on the future of securities clearing and settlement. With the European Commission's review gathering pace, many will have been somewhat surprised to hear that the European Central Bank (ECB) has also been speculating as to how it might become involved in the consolidation process.

Less surprising, however, is the ECB's enthusiasm for what it describes as "public intervention". In a speech given in April, Sirkka Hämäläinen, a member of the executive board of the ECB, presented the evidence in favour of this argument.