In 2005 italy's UniCredit bought hvb, Germany's second-largest lender, in what at the time was the continent's biggest cross-border bank merger. At a stroke this gave UniCredit a commanding presence in Germany, Austria and Poland. It was widely hailed as a foretaste of deals to come thanks to Europe's single currency. "We will become the first truly European bank," declared Alessandro Profumo, Unicredit's chief at the time. So it was something of a shock when in 2011 Germany's bank regulator, BaFin, sought to limit the amount of cash UniCredit could transfer to its Italian parent, fearing that the German unit's financial health might be compromised. This seemed to violate the spirit of free capital movement within Europe, and officials in Brussels complained. Finance, the sector that globalised the most in the years leading up to the crisis, is threatening to go into reverse. Between 1990 and 2007 cross-border bank flows increased about tenfold, to around $5 trillion, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, the consultancy's research arm. Last year the figure was less than a third of that. The decline extended across all regions, though EuroDe suffered most.
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机译：2005年，意大利的UniCredit收购了德国第二大银行hvb，这是当时欧洲大陆最大的跨境银行合并。这使UniCredit迅速占领了德国，奥地利和波兰。由于欧洲单一货币，它被广泛视为交易的预兆。当时，Unicredit的负责人亚历山德罗·普罗菲莫（Alessandro Profumo）表示：“我们将成为第一家真正的欧洲银行。因此，在2011年德国银行监管机构BaFin试图限制UniCredit可以转移给其意大利母公司的现金量时，就感到震惊，这是因为担心该德国子公司的财务状况可能受到损害。这似乎违反了欧洲内部自由资本流动的精神，布鲁塞尔的官员对此表示抱怨。金融是危机爆发前几年中全球化程度最高的行业，它正面临逆转的威胁。咨询公司麦肯锡全球研究所（McKinsey Global Institute）的数据显示，1990年至2007年期间，跨境银行资金流量增长了约十倍，达到约5万亿美元。去年这个数字还不到这个数字的三分之一。下降趋势遍及所有地区，尽管EuroDe受害最大。
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