The eurozone's top bank supervisor, Daniele Nouy, on Tuesday urged the sector to press ahead with cross-border mergers, arguing tie-ups would help forge a stronger European finance industry. "We definitely need more... cross-border consolidations, in particular," Nouy - who heads the European Central Bank's supervisory arm - told a Frankfurt banking conference, adding that as an "optimistic person" she hoped to see some within 12 months.

"I think one of the next objectives for the Single Supervisory Mechanism is to really forge a European banking sector," she said. "I hope that thanks to the benefits of a better economic situation, of consistent supervision for European groups, the banks will move and get the benefits of the single jurisdiction."

Nouy, head of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) since it began work in 2014, has long encouraged banks to tie the knot across the borders between the eurozone's 19 members. While the SSM is formally part of the ECB, it acts independently from it in order to avoid any conflicts of interest.

Her latest remarks come as takeover rumours have been swirling around Germany's second-biggest lender, Commerzbank, for weeks. Its yellow-triangle logo is reportedly in the sights of peers like France's BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole or Italy's Unicredit. Recently, most tie-ups in the sector have seen more solid lenders take over shaky smaller banks within the same country, such as Santander's purchase of Banco Popular in Spain. It is "not the jobs of technocrats in a tower to decide" which banks merge, Nouy said, but added that her staff will "make sure we don't prevent (such mergers) from happening."

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017