The business of bankers, including investment bankers, has become strongly internationalized since 1985 when foreign investment started to grow considerably. This included FDI in the banking sector, which became one of the leading sectors in not only OECD countries but worldwide. The start of the euro and the ECB strongly stimulated internationalization in the eurozone in the sense that cross-border investment within the eurozone became more common than before. This was also within the context of globalization, however, which means that banks and other actors in the financial market increasingly invested outside the eurozone-most notably in the US which attracted large capital inflows; slow growth of loan markets, particularly in Germany, have stimulated banks' search for new investment opportunities abroad. The US financial market has boomed since the 1990s and recovered from the shock of September 11, 2001. In real estate markets there was a particular boom as real prices of real estate showed an annual increase of about 4% in the period 1995-2006-even close to 7% in 2006; the hike was 10% in nominal terms in 2005 (Rifflart 2007).
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