> Germany and the other continental European countries with
> bank-centered systems are evolving in the stock direction, and the
> creation of the euro will almost certainly promote this.
Are they, really? A few EU firms may be going public, but massive amounts of stock seems to be vanishing, the good old-fashioned way -- via humongous mergers. None of the Central European banks has divested themselves of their industrial holdings. And the bank mergers sweeping the EU have been powerfully orchestrated by Governments (to the point where rentiers routinely whine about the employment guarantees given by merging French banks, etc.). It all looks more like intra-EU consolidation and the creation of multinational financial-industrial groups, than the adoption of US-style Bubble madness.
Can any of the bank/financial folks on this list confirm/deny this?
-- Dennis