As ECB Tapering Approaches, Populism Across Europe Looms

With a strain of populism spreading across Europe – one that threatens the very existence of the European Union if Marine Le Pen is elected president in France – one antidote for large regional corporations is get bigger or get acquired, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report notes. With uncertainty in the region the only certainty and the prospects of the ECB tapering on the horizon, weaning markets of the placating forces of quantitative stimulus and negative interest rates, the brew being conjured up in Europe is particularly interesting and potentially volatile at the moment. ECB tapering is coming…