it was in Europe that bank finance had grown most disproportionately.47 Europe’s banks had always been large. Unlike the United States, where equity and bond markets were the main sources of business finance, Europe’s economies had long relied heavily on bank lending. But spreading out across the EU and feeding off the transatlantic financial circuit, the European banks had grown to gargantuan size. In 2007 the three largest banks in the world by assets were all European—RBS, Deutsche Bank and BNP.
