In almost eleven years of financial crisis, around 700 European lenders have exited the scene. The report by the European Central Bank underlines that the total - which includes large groups and even individual institutions based in the EU - stands at 3154 units today.
The peak of active institutions was reached at the end of 2008, with 3928 banks operating in the European Union. The crisis has hit the "small" institutions the hardest: in just 9 months more than 140 small banks have ceased to operate autonomously.
In the same period, bank assets fell by more than 1000 trillion euros, from 34.988 billion at the end of June 2016 to 33.982 billion at the end of March 2017.
