Splitting banks should be last resort: EU lawmaker

Brussels

SPLITTING consumer and trading activities at the European Union's biggest banks should be a supervisor's last resort after other crisis management tools fail, a key member of the bloc's legislature said.

Gunnar Hoekmark, a Swede who is leading the European Parliament's work on a bank structure bill put forward last year by the European Commission, said that separation should be used only if banks deemed too big to fail do not take other measures such as boosting capital or increasing issuance of loss-absorbing debt.