European banks have frequently been in the headlines of the financial media this year. We have seen bank bailouts in Italy, mergers and acquisitions in Spain, large volumes of primary bank issuance as governments sold their stakes and the sector has remained a proxy for market sentiment on future European Central Bank (ECB) rate policy.
The wider European financial sector outperformed the MSCI Europe ex-UK index by 4% in 2017 through the first week in August, but has underperformed the index over the last few weeks.
