Larger European banks searching for market growth have inevitably looked outside their home country for new opportunities. One study shows that the 15 largest European banks by market value held an average of 24 per cent of their assets outside their home market in 2006 – up from just 11 per cent in 1997. In the current climate, there is some concern that a bank failure would be difficult to predict or manage, since regulators police their own jurisdictions and pan-European banks are not accountable to different national regulators. We are likely to see a gradual emergence of greater co-operation among the EU's financial regulators, but political realities ensure that an EU-wide agreed financial regulator to replace national ones is a long way off.