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EBI STUDIES IN
BANKING AND CAPITAL MARKETS LAW

Digitalisation, Sustainability,
and the Banking and
Capital Markets Union
Thoughts on Current Issues of
EU Financial Regulation

Edited by Lukas Böffel · Jonas Schürger

 EBI Studies in Banking and Capital Markets Law

Series Editors
Danny Busch, Financial Law Centre (FLC), Radboud University Nijmegen,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Christos V. Gortsos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens,
Greece
Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan,
Milano, Italy

Editorial Board
(All members of the EBI Academic Board)
Dariusz Adamski, University of Wroclaw
Filippo Annunziata, Bocconi University
Jens-Hinrich Binder, University of Tübingen
William Blair, Queen Mary University of London
Concetta Brescia Morra, University of Roma Tre
Blanaid Clarke, Trinity College Dublin, Law School
Veerle Colaert, KU Leuven University
Guido Ferrarini, University of Genoa
Seraina Grünewald, Radboud University Nijmegen
Christos Hadjiemmanuil, University of Piraeus
Bart Joosen, Free University Amsterdam
Marco Lamandini, University of Bologna
Rosa Lastra, Queen Mary University of London
Edgar Löw, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
Luis Morais, University of Lisbon, Law School
Peter O. Mülbert, University of Mainz
David Ramos Muñoz, University Carlos III of Madrid
Andre Prüm, University of Luxembourg
Juana Pulgar Ezquerra, Complutense University of Madrid
Georg Ringe, University of Hamburg
Rolf Sethe, University of Zürich
Michele Siri, University of Genoa
Eddy Wymeersch, University of Ghent
General Series Editors
(all members of the EBI Academic Board)
Danny Busch, Financial Law Centre (FLC), Radboud University Nijmegen,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Christos V. Gortsos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens,
Greece
Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
The European Banking Institute
The European Banking Institute based in Frankfurt is an international centre for
banking studies resulting from the joint venture of Europe’s preeminent academic
institutions which have decided to share and coordinate their commitments and
structure their research activities in order to provide the highest quality legal,
economic and accounting studies in the field of banking regulation, banking
supervision and banking resolution in Europe. The European Banking Institute
is structured to promote the dialogue between scholars, regulators, supervisors,
industry representatives and advisors in relation to issues concerning the regula-
tion and supervision of financial institutions and financial markets from a legal,
economic and any other related viewpoint.
As of May 2021, the Academic Members of the European Banking Institute
are the following: Universiteit van Amsterdam, University of Antwerp, University
of Piraeus, Alma Mater Studiorum–Università di Bologna, Universität Bonn,
Academia de Studii Economice din Bucures, ti (ASE), Trinity College Dublin,
University of Edinburgh, Goethe-Universität, Universiteit Gent, University of
Helsinki, Universiteit Leiden, KU Leuven University, Universidade Católica
Portuguesa, Universidade de Lisboa, University of Ljubljana, Queen Mary
University of London, Université du Luxembourg, Universidad Autónoma
Madrid, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Universidad Complutense, Madrid,
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, University of Malta, Università Cattolica
del Sacro Cuore, University of Cyprus, Radboud Universiteit, BI Norwe-
gian Business School, Université Panthéon - Sorbonne (Paris 1), Université
Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2), University of Stockholm, University of Tartu,
University of Vienna, University of Wrocław, Universität Zürich.
Supervisory Board of the European Banking Institute:
Thomas Gstaedtner, President of the Supervisory Board of the European Banking
Institute
Enrico Leone, Chancellor of the European Banking Institute
European Banking Institute e.V.
TechQuartier (POLLUX), Platz der Einheit 2
60327 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Website: www.ebi-europa.eu
 Lukas Böffel · Jonas Schürger
Editors

Digitalisation,
Sustainability,
and the Banking
and Capital Markets
Union
Thoughts on Current Issues of EU Financial
Regulation
Editors
Lukas Böffel Jonas Schürger
Associated Researchers Group Young Researchers Group
European Banking Institute e.V. European Banking Institute e.V.
Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt, Germany

ISSN 2730-9088 ISSN 2730-9096 (electronic)

EBI Studies in Banking and Capital Markets Law
ISBN 978-3-031-17076-8 ISBN 978-3-031-17077-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17077-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Foreword

It is rather uncommon and, therefore, it is particularly noteworthy and

welcome when early-stage researchers take the initiative to publish a book
meeting high academic standard. This applies a fortiori if the book covers
areas characterised by their broad scope and high complexity, such as
financial regulation. Accordingly, it was both ambitious and challenging
when the Young Researchers of the European Banking Institute (EBI),
led by Lukas Böffel and Jonas Schürger, proposed this project in late
2021. However, with this final product, they did not fall short of their
promise (and my expectations) to deliver an in-depth collective work with
thought-provoking and excellent chapters, and I wish to congratulate
them personally warmly for that achievement.
Overall, the book entails 14 contributions, covering well-selected and
intriguing topics on digital finance, sustainable finance, as well as the EU
banking and capital markets unions. Almost all authors are members of
either the Young Researchers Group (YRG) or the Associated Researchers
Group (ARG) of the EBI. Their contributions reveal a remarkably
high academic level, analysing the issues from a normative, economic,
technological and/or policy-oriented perspective. Notably, most of the
contributors are currently conducting their Ph.D. theses on the same or,
at least, a closely related topic as in this book, which has made the research
even more profound.

v
vi FOREWORD

The chapters of this book serve academics, practitioners, judges, super-

visors and regulators as a valuable source to shed light on the current
drivers of EU financial regulation. Therefore, it should not be left unread.

August 2022 Christos V. Gortsos

Professor of Public Economic Law
at the National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens, President
of the Academic Board
of the European Banking Institute
Athens, Greece
 Preface

EU Financial Regulation is a highly complex area with seemingly endless

facets. Also, it is extremely volatile. The last 20 years have proven that
both the economic and legal landscape can transform almost from one day
to the other. Notably, the European financial sector’s resilience was put to
a test twice in less than two decades—first, after the Global Financial Crisis
and second, as a consequence of the pandemic. Notwithstanding this chal-
lenging environment, other developments evolved, namely digitalisation
and (human caused) climate change. These two shape the current polit-
ical, economic, and scholarly debates in financial regulation. And for good
reason: both digitalisation and sustainability do not only question tradi-
tional financial regulation concepts nowadays, but they raise doubts as
to how the current regime can function in the next ten, 20 or 50 years.
Moreover, they heavily impact the ongoing discussion about the Banking
and Capital Markets Union.
We hope that this book sheds light on some of the pressing issues and
stimulates the discussion. The book comprises 14 chapters and is divided
into three sections, namely digital finance, sustainable finance as well as
the Banking and Capital Markets Union.
Within the digital finance section, this book addresses the question of
whether the biggest tech companies are putting us in a new “too tech
to fail” situation. Two chapters then discuss the regulation of Artificial
Intelligence and Machine Learning in the context of EU capital markets.
Moreover, analyses of the regulatory forecast of tokenised crowdfunding,

vii
viii PREFACE

the regulatory coordination and diffusion in digital financial services, and

the phenomenon of open banking are part of this section. The last chapter
discusses the management of ICT third party risk under the new Digital
Operational Resilience Act.
The sustainable finance section begins with a holistic comparison of
sustainability regulation in the banking and insurance industry. This is
followed by an analysis shedding light on the financial stability implica-
tions of sustainability in EU microprudential banking regulation. The last
chapter discusses the primary law limits of a green monetary policy in the
EMU.
Last but not least, selected issues concerning the two major projects
of EU regulation, the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union,
are analysed. The first chapter deals with duty of care as a judicial review
tool for SSM composite procedures. Afterwards, the clash between public
interest and property rights in EU banking resolution is investigated. The
last two chapters take a group perspective: one focuses on preemptive
financing arrangements within cross-border banking groups and one on
post-Brexit enforcement of subsidiarisation in the European Union.
All of the 17 authors have conducted or are conducting their Ph.D.
in the field of financial regulation. Almost all authors are affiliated
with the European Banking Institute (EBI), either as members of the
Young Researchers Group (YRG) or the Associated Researchers Group
(ARG). The European Banking Institute is an international Frankfurt-
based centre for banking studies, a joint venture of Europe’s preeminent
academic institutions, sharing and coordinating their commitments and
structuring their research activities to provide the highest quality of legal,
economic and accounting studies in banking regulation, banking super-
vision and banking resolution in Europe. Under this umbrella, the YRG
operates as an inter-disciplinary and international platform for exchange
and mutual learning for early-stage researchers in the rapidly developing
area of banking law and policy. It conducts research and promotes debate
and dialogue between young researchers in relation to issues concerning
regulation and supervision of financial institutions and financial markets.
We are grateful for the tremendous support and the opportunity given
to us to edit this book by the Academic Board of the EBI, namely Prof.
Christos Gortsos and Prof. Matthias Haentjens. Furthermore, we thank
the editors of the series for approving and including our book proposal
 PREFACE ix

in this great series. Finally, we thank all our contributors whose diligent
and excellent work made it very pleasant to edit this book.

Frankfurt, Germany Dr. Lukas Böffel, LL.M. (Berkeley)

Frankfurt, Germany Dr. Jonas Schürger
August 2022
 Contents

Part I Digital Finance

1 Too Tech to Fail? 3
Nordine Abidi and Ixart Miquel-Flores
2 The Algorithmic Future of EU Market Conduct
Supervision: A Preliminary Check 53
Alessio Azzutti
3 Supervisory Oversight of the Use of AI and ML
by Financial Market Participants 99
Patrick Raschner
4 Tokenised Crowdfunding: What Regulatory Forecast? 125
Emeric Prévost
5 Regulatory Coordination and Diffusion in Digital
Financial Services and Sustainable Finance 165
Pedro Schilling de Carvalho
6 Open Banking, Access to Account Rule and (Free)
Marketability of Banking Data 189
Daniel Foà
7 Management of ICT Third Party Risk Under
the Digital Operational Resilience Act 211
Stavros Kourmpetis

xi
xii CONTENTS

Part II Sustainable Finance

8 Sustainability: A Current Driver in EU Banking
and Insurance Regulation 229
Lukas Böffel and Jonas Schürger
9 Sustainability and Systemic Risk in EU Banking
Regulation 273
Joeri De Smet
10 Green Monetary Policy in the EMU and Its Primary
Law Limits 295
Matthias Mayer and Jonas Schürger

Part III Banking and Capital Markets Union

11 Duty of Care as a Judicial Review Tool for SSM
Composite Procedures 329
Barbora Budinská and Jouke Tegelaar
12 Game of Thrones—The Clash Between Public Interest
and Property Rights in Banking Resolution 353
Elli Anastopoulou
13 Preemptive Financing Arrangements Within
Cross-Border Banking Groups: Between Flexibility
and Legal Certainty 377
Ilya Kokorin
14 From Branches to Subsidiaries: Post-brexit
Enforcement of Subsidiarisation in the European
Union 397
Pier Mario Lupinu

Index 421
 Notes on Contributors

Dr. Nordine Abidi was an Economist in the Monetary Policy Depart-

ment at the European Central bank (ECB). He was responsible for
monitoring, analysing and conducting studies on the non-bank transmis-
sion of monetary policy and on cyclical and structural developments in the
financial markets that have an impact on the euro area from a monetary
policy perspective. He was also in charge of the evaluation of the ECB’s
corporate asset purchase programme. Since September 2019, he joined
the IMF and worked on a variety of analytical and policy endeavours (e.g.
monetary and capital market issues, policy response to the COVID-19
crisis, regional economic outlook). He obtained a Ph.D. in Economics
from Toulouse School of Economics, France in 2016.
Elli Anastopoulou is a Ph.D. candidate at the Law School of the
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). She holds an
LL.B and an LL.M from Law School of NKUA and an LL.M from
Cambridge University. Currently, she is a practising lawyer, whereas previ-
ously, she has worked in the legal services of the European Banking
Authority and the European Central Bank.
Alessio Azzutti is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Hamburg,
School of Law, and a Research Associate at the Centre of Banking and
Finance Law, National University of Singapore. He was also a Research
Associate within the “Law, Finance, & Technology” programme at the
Institute of Law & Economics (University of Hamburg) between 2019

xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

and 2022. He holds an LLM in Law & Economics (Utrecht University)

and an MSc in Finance and Risk Management (University of Florence).
His research focuses on the implications of technological innovation
for banking, payments, capital markets law and crime from an inter-
disciplinary perspective. He is also a Member of the European Banking
Institute Young Researchers Group.
Dr. Lukas Böffel obtained a Ph.D. from Free University Berlin in 2021
and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law
in 2022 with a Master of Laws (LL.M.). During this time, he acted as
supervising editor of the Berkeley Business Law Journal. Since July 2022
he is a member of the Associated Researchers Group. Between 2020 and
2021 he was member and coordinator of the Young Researchers Group.
Barbora Budinská is a Meijers Ph.D. candidate at the Leiden Law
School’s Europa Institute in the Netherlands. She holds law degrees from
Humboldt University in Berlin and Leiden University and is a member
of the Young Researchers Group of the European Banking Institute. In
2021, she worked as a trainee at the European Central Bank’s Supervisory
Law Division.
Joeri De Smet is a Ph.D. researcher at KU Leuven and a Ph.D. fellow at
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). He studied law at KU Leuven
(LL.B, LL.M.) and the University of Oxford (MJur). He is currently
writing his Ph.D. on the regulation of systemically important financial
institutions and has been co-coordinator of the Young Researchers Group
of the EBI since July 2022.
Daniel Foà is a Ph.D. Fellow in Law and Business at LUISS Guido
Carli, admitted to Italian Bar. He graduated in Law cum laude at Roma
Tre University (2018) defending a thesis in banking law, and during his
studies, he spent a semester as Erasmus Plus student at ELTE University
in Budapest.
Ilya Kokorin is a Meijers Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Financial
Law, Leiden University (the Netherlands). His research focuses on insol-
vency of multinational enterprises and the role of intra-group financing
in restructuring of groups of companies, including banking groups. He
is a member of European Banking Institute Young Researchers Group,
Early Researcher Academics of INSOL International, NextGen IX class
of International Insolvency Institute and Oxford Digital Assets Project.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

Stavros Kourmpetis is a Ph.D. candidate at the Law School of the

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and an attorney at law
in Athens Bar Association in his law office. He holds a Master of Science
in Law and Economics from the University of Piraeus and a LLM in
Financial Regulation from NKUOA. His scientific research is all around
financial technology and its relation with financial institutions. He joined
the Young Researchers Group in 2021.
Pier Mario Lupinu is a Ph.D. candidate in Banking and Finance Law
jointly at the Universities of Luxembourg and Roma Tre, supported by
the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)—10965388. He is a
Young Researcher at the European Banking Institute and he has been a
Visiting Scholar at the Columbia Law School in New York and a DAAD-
funded visiting researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research
SAFE at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Currently, he is a visiting
researcher in Bank Insolvency at UNIDROIT.
Dr. Matthias Mayer is a legal trainee at the Higher Regional Court
of Cologne. During this time, he worked inter alia for the ECB. He
obtained his Ph.D. in law from the University of Bonn for his thesis on the
distribution of losses arising from the Eurosystem’s open market policy.
Ixart Miquel-Flores is a Ph.D. candidate in the Finance Department
at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. During Autumn 2022,
he has been a visiting Ph.D. student to the finance department in The
University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He as well works
with the European Central Bank. He uses modern applied econometric
methods to understand the effects and consequences of monetary policy,
financial regulation and new technologies on the banking sector and other
macro-financial stability issues.
Emeric Prévost is University Assistant at the University of Vienna
(Austria) and Lecturer at Meiji University (Tokyo, Japan). He is admitted
to the French bar and a Ph.D candidate at the University of Strasbourg
(France).
Patrick Raschner studied law at the University of Innsbruck and the
Erasmus University Rotterdam. From 2018 to 2022, he was teaching and
research associate (prae-doc) at the Institute of Business and Tax Law
(Department of Business Law) at the University of Innsbruck, where he
also obtained his Ph.D.. He was a member of the EBI YRG Cohort 2021–
2022. From September 2022, he will be postdoctoral researcher at the
Institute of Business Law (Chair of Banking and Financial Market Law)
at the University of Liechtenstein.
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Pedro Schilling de Carvalho is an Early Career Fellow in Financial

Law and Regulation at the University of Edinburgh, a Researcher at
the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, and a Consultant at the
Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank Group. Previously, he pursued
an LL.M. and a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, and has been a
Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School and the Max Planck Institute for
Comparative and International Private Law (Hamburg).
Dr. Jonas Schürger is a legal trainee at the Higher Regional Court
of Cologne. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn on the
topic of market access of foreign financial service providers via the prin-
ciples of equivalence and substituted compliance. Moreover, he was the
coordinator of the Young Researchers Group of the EBI until July 2022.
Jouke Tegelaar is a Ph.D. candidate at the Hazelhoff Center for Financial
Law at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She holds a master’s degree
(LL.M.) in both financial law (summa cum laude) and civil law. Her
Ph.D. research focuses on judicial protection in the Single Supervisory
Mechanism. She is a member of the European Banking Institute Young
Researchers Group.
 Abbreviations

ABM Agent-Based Modelling

ABS Asset-Backed Securities
AFM Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële
Markten)
AG Advocate General
AI Artificial Intelligence
AIF Alternative Investment Fund
AIFMD Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive
AIFMs Alternative Investment Funds Managers
AISP Account Information Service Provider
AML Anti-Money Laundering
APAC Asia-Pacific
API Application Programming Interface
APP Asset Purchase Programme
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
ASIC Australian Securities and Investments Commission
ASPSP Account Servicing Payment Service Providers
BaFin German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt
für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht)
BAIT German prudential requirements for IT which are mainly intended
for the management boards of credit institutions (Bankauf-
sichtliche Anforderungen an die IT)
BCBS Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
BICS Bloomberg Industry Classification System
BIS Bank of International Settlements
BPE Banco Popular Español

xvii
xviii ABBREVIATIONS

BPVI Banca Popolare di Vicenza

BRRD Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive
BU Banking Union
CBDCs Central Bank Digital Currencies
CBM Contractually Binding Mechanism
CCPs Central Clearing Counterparties
CDR Commission Delegated Regulation
CFPB Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
CFRF Climate Financial Risk Forum
CFT Combating the Financing of Terrorism
CFTC Commodity Futures Trading Commission
ChFR Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
CISS Composite Index of Systemic Stress Index
CISS Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress
CJEU Court of Justice of the European Union
CoFR Code of Federal Regulation
CRA Credit Rating Agency
CRD Capital Requirements Directive
CRR Capital Requirements Regulation
CSD Central Securities Depositories
CSDB Centralized Security Database
CSDR Central Securities Depositories Regulation
CSPP Corporate Sector Purchase Programme
CSSF Luxembourg’s Financial regulator (Commission de Surveillance du
Secteur Financier)
CTPPs Critical Third Party Providers
DAO Decentralized Autonomous Organisation
DEA Direct Electronic Access
DeFi Decentralized Finance
DGS Deposit Guarantee Scheme
DL Deep Learning
DLT Distributed Ledger Technology
DNA Data-Network-Activities
DNB De Nederlandsche Bank
DORA Digital Operational Resilience Act
DRL Deep Reinforcement Learning
EBA European Banking Authority
EBU European Banking Union
EC European Commission
ECAI External Credit Assessment Institution
ECB European Central Bank
ECHR European Convention on Human Rights
ECJ European Court of Justice
 ABBREVIATIONS xix

ECRB Euro Cyber Resilience Board

ECSPR European Crowdfunding Service Providers Regulation
ECtHR European Court of Human Rights
EDIS European Deposit Insurance Scheme
EIOPA European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority
EMD Electronic Money Directive
EMU European Monetary Union
ESAs European Supervisory Authorities
ESCB European System of Central Banks
ESG Environmental, Social and Governance
ESMA European Securities and Markets Authority
ESRB European Systemic Risk Board
EU European Union
FAAMG Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google (Alphabet)
FATF Financial Action Task Force
FBOs Foreign Banking Organisations
FCA Financial Conduct Authority
FDIC Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
FinCEN Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
FINRA Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
FinTech Financial Technology
FIs Financial Institutions
FMA Austrian Financial Market Authority (Österreichische Finanzmark-
taufsichtsbehörde)
FMIs Financial Market Infrastructures
FOLTF Failing or Likely to Fail
FSB Financial Stability Board
FSF Financial Stability Forum
G-SIBs Global Systemically Important Banks
G-SIIs Global Systemically Important Institutions
GC General Court
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GDPR General Data Protections Regulation
GFC Global Financial Crisis
GFIN Global Financial Innovation Network
GFSA Group Financial Support Agreement
GFSTs Government Financial Stabilisation Tools
GLBA Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
GTROs Green Targeted Refinancing Operations
HFT High-Frequency Trading
HICP Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices
IaaS Infrastructure as a Service
IAIS International Association of Insurance Supervisors
xx ABBREVIATIONS

IBM International Business Machines Corporation

ICAAP Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process
ICPF Insurance Corporations and Pension Funds
ICPFs Insurance Corporations and Pension Funds
ICO Initial Coin Offering
ICT Information Communication Technology
IFA International Financial Architecture
Ifs Investment Funds
IHC Intermediate Holding Companies
IMF International Monetary Fund
IOSCO International Organization of Securities Commissions
ISIN International Security Identification Number
ISSBs International Standard-Setter Bodies
IPO Initial Public Offering
IPU Intermediate Parent Undertaking
ITS Implementing Technical Standards
IVF Investment Funds
JOBS Act Jumpstart our Business Startups Act
LTROs Longer-Term Refinancing Operations
MAD Market Abuse Directive
MAR Market Abuse Regulation
MAS Monetary Authority of Singapore
MENA Middle East and North Africa
MiCAR Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation
MiFID Markets in Financial Instruments Directive
MiFIR Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation
ML Machine Learning
MMF Money Market Funds
MoU Memorandum of Understanding
MPOE Multiple Point of Entry
MREL Minimum Requirement for Own Funds and Eligible Liabilities
MROs Main Refinancing Operations
MS Member States
MTF Multilateral Trading Facility
NCAs National Competent Authorities
NCB National Central Bank
NCWO No Creditor Worse Off
NFA National Futures Association
NFC Non-Financial Corporations
NGFS Network for Greening the Financial System
NISD Network and Information Systems Directive
OCC Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
 ABBREVIATIONS xxi

OFI Other Financial Intermediaries

OLS Ordinary Least Squares
ORSA Own Risk and Solvency Assessment
P1-A1 Art. 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR
PaaS Platform as a Service
PEPP Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme
PISP Payment Initiation Service Provider
PPPI Prudent Person Principle and Investments
PRA Prudential Regulation Authority
PSD Payment Services Directive
RegTech Regulatory Technology
RL Reinforcement Learning
ROE Return on Equity
ROFIEG Expert Group on Regulatory Obstacles to Financial Innovation
RTS Regulatory Technical Standards
SaaS Software as a Service
SEC Securities and Exchange Commission
SFCR Solvency and Financial Condition Report
SHSS Securities Holding Statistics by Sector
SPOE Single Point of Entry
SPV Special Purpose Vehicle
SRB Single Resolution Board
SREP Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process
SRF Single Resolution Fund
SRMR Single Resolution Mechanism Regulation
SSA Secured Support Agreement
SSM Single Supervisory Mechanism
SSS Security Settlement System
STO Security Token Offering
STOR Suspicious Transactions or Order Reports
SupTech Supervisory Technology
TBTF Too-Big-to-Fail
TCBs Third-Country Branches
TCFD Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures
TEU Treaty on the European Union
TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
TIBER-EU Threat Intelligence-based Ethical Red Teaming
TLAC Total Loss Absorbing Capacity
TLOF Total Liabilities and Own Funds
TLTROs Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations
TPP Third Party Providers
TSP Technology Service Provider
TTTF Too-Tech-to-Fail
xxii ABBREVIATIONS

UCC Uniform Commercial Code

UK United Kingdom
ULC Uniform Law Commission
URVCBA Uniform Regulation of Virtual-Currency Business Act
US United States
UTXO Unspent Transactions Output
VB Veneto Banca
VIX Index Volatility Index
XAI EXplainable AI
 List of Figures

Chapter 1
Fig. 1 Market-based cost of funding (This figure shows the average
option-adjusted yield to maturity of all outstanding USD
denominated bonds, issued by US companies. We restrict
the CSDB securities dataset to securities that have a specific
bond seniority, we keep only unguaranteed senior unsecured
bonds, and we will do the same for the funding advantage
analysis. The vertical line denotes the COVID-19 shock
as of March 2020. Source Bloomberg, ECB (CSDB),
authors’ calculations) 22
Fig. 2 Sectorial BigTech holdings to total holdings (This
figure shows the aggregate holdings of BigTech bonds
to the aggregate holdings in the dataset (upper graph),
together with the aggregate holdings of USD denominated
BigTech bonds for each holder sector, as a percentage
of the same sector aggregate holdings (lower graph),
as well as the quarterly average of the VIX Index. Source
Bloomberg, ECB (CSDB and SHSS), authors’ calculations) 27
Fig. 3 Market capitalization of tech companies, financial institutions
and other non-financial, non-tech corporations (in billion US
dollars) (This figure shows the companies with the biggest
market capitalization across sectors, for companies that are
available in our dataset as of December 2021. The figures
are obtained from Bloomberg and expressed in USD Billion.
Source Bloomberg, authors’ calculations) 28

xxiii
xxiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4 The size of BigTech in the new economy (This figure shows
the size of BigTech companies as represented by their market
capitalization, compared to Benchmark Indexes Market
Capitalization and United States and Euro Area Gross
Domestic Product. BigTech is represented by Facebook,
Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Figures are shown
in USD Trillion. Source Datastream, Bloomberg, World
Bank) 29
Fig. 5 Value of the Implicit Funding Advantage over Time
(This figure shows the estimate results of annual funding
advantage or subsidy to large tech companies, in terms
of basis points and as well as total subsidy in USD
millions. In order to compute the annual funding
advantage, we run the regression below for each year:
Ad jY ields i,b,t = β0 + β1 Leveragei,b,t + β2 P B Ratioi,b,t
+β3 R O E i,b,t + β4 I ntCoveragei,b,t + β5 T imetoMat b,t
+β6 Log Amount Out b,t + β7 BigT ech i,b,t + β8 Rating i,b,t
+γ1 X i,b,t + Ui,b,t The coefficient BigTech represents
the subsidy to large tech companies. We as well compute
the monetary value of the annual subsidy. We multiply
the annual reduction in funding costs in basis points, by total
debt, we measure total in two ways, (i) an upper bound
as the sum of long-term debt, current liabilities and total
loans, (ii) a lower bound that excludes the current liabilities.
Source Bloomberg, ECB (CSDB), authors’ calculations) 35

Chapter 5
Fig. 1 Expansion of NGFS membership 177

Chapter 13
Fig. 1 Support agreement under the resolution plan of JPMorgan
Chase & Co 392
 List of Tables

Chapter 1
Table 1 Summary statistics 19
Table 2 Holder level summary statistics 23
Table 3 Holder level summary statistics by BigTech group 25
Table 4 BigTech holdings: Intensive margin 37
Table 5 BigTech holdings: Extensive margin 38
Table 6 BigTech holdings: Intensive margin: Control for valuation
effect 39
Table 7 BigTech holdings: Intensive margin, alternative measures
of financial distress 48
Table 8 BigTech holdings: Extensive margin, alternative measures
of financial distress 49
Table 9 Key variables definition 50
Table 10 Harmonized rating scale 51

xxv
 PART I

Digital Finance
 CHAPTER 1

Too Tech to Fail?

Nordine Abidi and Ixart Miquel-Flores

“Trustworthy Computing is more important than any other part of our work
[...]. Computing is already an important part of many people’s lives. Within
10 years, it will be an integral and indispensable part of almost everything
we do.”

(Bill Gates, Trustworthy Computing Memo. Tuesday, January 15, 2002

5:22 PM)

N. Abidi (B)
International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, United States
e-mail: NAbidi@imf.org
I. Miquel-Flores
European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany
e-mail: Ixart.Miquel_Flores@ecb.europa.eu; Ixart.Miquel-Flores@ebi-europa.eu
Young Researchers Group, European Banking Institute, Frankfurt, Germany
Department of Finance, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management,
Frankfurt, Germany

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2023
L. Böffel and J. Schürger(eds.), Digitalisation, Sustainability, and the
Banking and Capital Markets Union, EBI Studies in Banking and
Capital Markets Law, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17077-5_1
4 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

“Size, we are told, is not a crime. But size may, at least, become noxious by
reason of the means through which it was attained or the uses to which it is
put.”

(Louis Brandeis, Other People’s Money: And How the Bankers Use it.
Chapter 8: A Curse of Bigness)

1 Introduction
Over the past two decades, technological change has brought about a
sociocultural evolution and revolution in terms of who controls informa-
tion and knowledge. Today, the biggest five tech companies in the United
States make up to about a quarter of the value of the S&P 500 by market
capitalization. Google and Facebook receive 90% of the world’s news ad-
spending, Amazon controls half of all e-commerce in the United States,
and BigTech operating systems run 99% of cell phones globally.1 The
COVID-19 crisis has expedited global reliance on these companies.
Many criticisms have been laid at the feet of tech giants.2 Their
business model, based on decades of unchecked valuable private data
collection, might pose a threat to the fabric of market economies.3
Network effects and monopolistic positions allow them to exert anti-
competitive behaviours and exercise overwhelming economic power and
influence4 Profit-and-offshore shifting practices enables them to avoid the
vast majority of corporate taxes.5 From a financial regulation perspec-
tive, tech giants are now at the heart of the financial system. They host
a growing mass of platforms including insurance, banking, and market
activities, as financial institutions are shifting critical operations such as

1 Foroohar R., Don’t Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech. (Penguin Books Limited,
2020).
2 Eve Smith, ‘The Techlash Against Amazon, Facebook and Google—And What They
Can Do’ (The Economist Briefing, January 20th 2018 edition) www.economist.com/
briefing/2018/01/20/the-techlash-against-amazon-facebook-and-google-and-what-they-
can-do, last accessed 3 September 2022.
3 Koenig G., My Data are Mine (2019) Generation Libre.
4 U.S. Congressional Research Service, Antitrust and Big Tech (2019) CRS Report
R45910.
5 OECD, International Community Strikes a Ground-Breaking Tax Deal for the Digital
Age (2021).
 1 TOO TECH TO FAIL? 5

payment systems and online banking activities on their cloud platforms.

Are tech giants “too big to fail”?
Although “too big to fail” (TBTF) has been a long-standing policy
issue, it was highlighted by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008–
2009, when governments around the world intervened to prevent the
near-collapse of several large financial firms in 2008 and 2009.6 Financial
firms were said to be TBTF because policymakers judged that their failure
would cause unacceptable disruptions to the overall economic system.7
Since then, researchers have mainly defined TBTF financial institutions
based on their size, complexity or interconnectedness.8
In addition to equity considerations, economic theory suggests that
expectations that a firm will not be allowed to fail create moral hazard—if
the creditors and counterparties of a TBTF firm believe that the govern-
ment will protect them from losses, they have less incentive to monitor the
firm riskiness because they are shielded from the negative consequences
of those risks.9 On the one hand, TBTF firms could have a funding
advantage compared with other companies, which some call an implicit
subsidy.10 On the other hand, some researchers and market participants

6 Tam Harbert, ‘Here’s How Much the 2008 Bailouts Really Cost’ (MIT Management
Sloan School, 21 February 2019) https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/heres-
how-much-2008-bailouts-really-cost, last accessed 3 September 2022.
7 “Too-big-to-fail” (TBTF) is a term coined by Congressman Stewart McKinney in
reference to the 1984 rescue of Continental Illinois Bank. See the 1984 Congressional
hearing “Inquiry into Continental Illinois Corp. and Continental Illinois National Bank”,
p. 300.
8 Gorton G., and Tallman E. W., ‘How Did Pre-Fed Banking Panics End?’ (2016)
National Bureau of Economic Research; Cetorelli N., and Traina J., ‘Resolving “Too Big
to Fail”’ (2018) 859 Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports.
9 Mishkin F. S., The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets (Pearson
Education 2007).
10 Li Y., Ng D. T., and Swaminathan B., ‘Predicting Market Returns Using Aggre-
gate Implied Cost of Capital’ (2013) 110(2) Journal of Financial Economics 419–436.
Ueda K., and Di Mauro B. W., ‘Quantifying Structural Subsidy Values for Systemically
Important Financial Institutions’ (2013) 37(10) Journal of Banking Finance 3830–3842.
Beyhaghi M., D’Souza C., Roberts G. S., ‘Funding Advantage and Market Discipline in
the Canadian Banking Sector’ (2013) 48 Journal of Banking Finance 396–410. Acharya
V., Anginer D., Warburton A. J., ‘The End of Market Discipline? Investor Expectations
of Implicit State Guarantees’ Working paper (2016).
6 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

have found weak evidence that large financial institutions are the bene-
ficiaries of implicit TBTF government policies and became riskier as a
result.11 Nevertheless, TBTF remains controversial.
In this chapter, we ask a simple question: Are “BigTechs” the new
TBTF firms? Amidst growing debate over the legal frameworks governing
social media sites and other technology companies, the BigTechs—such
as Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and
Microsoft—play a critical role in today’s marketplace and in our society
at large. Due to their unique position, fiscal, antitrust and monetary
policymakers as well as politicians have increasingly expressed concern
about how technology companies have grown in terms of scale and
scope without the appropriate regulatory environment.12 Consequently,
the TBTF discounts could also benefit BigTechs and therefore lower
their costs of funding. Intuitively, government guarantees could reduce
investor’s expected losses and have price implications, reflecting value
transfer from taxpayers to “Too-Tech-to-Fail” (TTTF) institutions and
their stakeholders. Since the GFC of 2008–2009, once again, some
companies could be at the core of the financial system, and these are
not banks. BigTechs growing footprint in the financial system—and the
economy as a whole—is pointing out towards a beginning of a paradigm
shift, which could have broader implications.
It should, therefore, not be surprising that the largest TTTF bonds
could trade at more favourable spreads than the bonds of other issuing
tech (or non-tech) companies at times. Yet, this differential could in large
part reflect the benefits of liquidity or other BigTech idiosyncratic char-
acteristics, the advantages of which are enjoyed by investors and issuers
alike. It is important to notice that there are also a number of possible
reasons why the largest firms, irrespective of their industries, tend to enjoy
a bond funding advantage. A key reason, seen across a range of sectors, is
the fact that investors are willing to pay for the benefits of liquidity, and

11 Beck T., Demirguc-Kunt A., Levine R., ‘Bank Concentration, Competition, and
Crises: First Results’ (2006) 30(5) Journal of Banking Finance 1581–1603. Goldman
Sachs, ‘Measuring the TBTF Effect on Bond Pricing.’ Goldman Sachs Global Market
Institute (2013).
12 See here https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/fair-taxation-digital-economy_en,
last accessed 3 September 2022.
 1 TOO TECH TO FAIL? 7

large firms tend to have more liquid bonds.13 Another possible important
reason is the fact that large firms are typically easier to recapitalize than
small firms. This leaves bond investors with fewer losses when large firms
encounter trouble, and supports their willingness to offer bond funding
at a lower risk premium.
The aim of our empirical analysis is to overcome these obstacles and
assess the possible funding advantage and the new role of the TTTF firms.
The focus on United States’ largest tech institutions aims at (i) quan-
tifying the funding advantage (if any) that these institutions benefit from;
and (ii) measuring the safeness of TTTF bonds from the perspective
of bondholders. For this, (iii) we rely on data from credit rating agen-
cies, company fundamentals and pricing of bonds in secondary markets
to measure the funding advantage accruing to the identified TTTF
companies, and (iv) we apply a difference-in-differences approach to
assess the TTTF holding behaviour of investors in times of financial
turmoil. We favoured methodologies that are tractable, transparent and
straightforward to implement.
In this chapter, we exploit a unique dataset that covers the universe
of USD denominated corporate bonds between Q3-2013 and Q4-2021,
issued by US firms and we find that the largest tech companies did indeed
experience a small funding advantage of 30bps. on average. Interestingly,
the advantage increased sharply during the COVID-19 crisis. Today, the
bonds of these BigTech companies still trade at a roughly 50bps. advan-
tage to the bonds of other large companies. Our estimates suggest that
the (implicit) subsidy is in the range of 1 to 2 USD billion per year.
From the perspective of investors, our analysis points out on the possi-
bility that TTTF bonds could be now considered as safe assets, that is,
debt instruments that are expected to preserve their value during adverse
systemic events.14 Put differently, we find evidence of a sharp relative
increase in holdings of BigTech securities in the portfolios in times of
market turbulence.
Our empirical framework combines various unique data sources at the
firm-, bond-, and investor-level. First, the sample of corporate bonds used

13 Edwards A., Harris L., and Piwowar M., ‘Corporate Bond Market Transparency and
Transaction Costs’ (2007) Journal of Finance. Mizrach B., ‘Analysis of Corporate Bond
Liquidity’ (2015) 110(2) Journal of Financial Economics 419–436.
14 Caballero R. J., Farhi E., Gourinchas P. O., ‘The Safe Assets Shortage Conundrum’
(2017) 31(3) Journal of Economic Perspectives 29–46.
8 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

is built on a comprehensive bond-level data obtained from the ECB’s

Centralized Security Database (CSDB) which we complement with firms
balance sheet information from ORBIS, and ratings data from Standard
and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. The CSDB provides extensive infor-
mation about each security. Such information includes, although is not
limited to, price, yield to maturity, outstanding amount, maturity and
issue date, seniority, as well as a set of issuer identifiers, sector and
industry. Second, we use security-by-security investor holding-level data
from the European System of Central Banks’ (ESCB) Securities Holding
Statistics by Sector (SHSS) which offers a comprehensive, fully integrated,
granular dataset of security holdings. This dataset provides an exhaustive
account of European portfolios between Q3-2013 and Q4-2021 both at
the country and sector level.
In all our analysis, we always consider the broader economic and
market context by looking beyond the tech industry to assess whether
large firms in general have a bond funding advantage. We, therefore,
take into account the fact that the largest firms in nearly all industries
do indeed benefit from lower bond funding costs than their smaller
peers, and find that, the biggest tech companies actually benefit more
than the biggest firms compared to all other industries. This result
seems to underpin the notion that government support could drive the
TTTF funding advantage. Finally, thanks to our investigation of portfolio
dynamics at a holder-sector level, we find that bondholders are sensitive to
financial distress and tend to re-balance their portfolios towards BigTech
bonds in times of high uncertainty, which could also support the view
that these debt instruments are more and more perceived as safe assets.
Looking at the literature, most previous studies have tested for the exis-
tence of TBTF expectations by looking at the relationship between debt
spreads, risk profile and, in some cases, size.15 Our reading of the evidence
is that it is not conclusive for financial firms.16 As of today, it is diffi-
cult to imagine the failure of one of the BigTech companies. However,

15 Acharya et al. (2016); Goldman Sachs (2013); Engle R., ‘Systemic Risk 10 Years
Later’ (2018) 10 Annual Review of Financial Economics 125–152; Cetorelli N., and
Traina J., ‘Resolving ‘Too Big to Fail’ (2018) 859 Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Staff Reports.
16 BIS, ‘Impact of Too-Big-To-Fail reforms’ www.bis.org/frame/tbtf/impact-estimates.
htm, last accessed 3 September 2022.
 1 TOO TECH TO FAIL? 9

serious disruptions in the sector caused by unexpected shocks (e.g., cyber-

attacks) could lead to government assistance.17 If the shock is significant,
the direct financial assistance to the tech industry could be designed on
a large scale. Important shocks could emerge, for instance, from the
fact that BigTechs are a few globally critical dominant providers of IT
services and infrastructures such as cloud computing and data analytics.
As mentioned before, BigTechs’ business model is geared towards oper-
ating digital ecosystems of interconnected products and services. Shocks
could also originate from traditional macroeconomic downturns. As a
matter of fact, tech giants are not entirely immune from business cycle
fluctuations, especially those that rely heavily on advertising (e.g., Face-
book’s short-term revenue has been significantly affected by a drop in
ad-spending). However, with huge cash reserves and market power, they
are much better placed to weather the economic downturns than other
industries.18 Also, the COVID-19 crisis is likely to consolidate and accel-
erate the existing trends which already have made BigTech companies the
world’s largest and most powerful corporations.
Our chapter contributes to the TBTF debate by developing an empir-
ical framework to assess the possible implicit public support for the
largest tech firms in the United States. So far, analyses outside of the
financial industry have been limited, and this work is novel given the
adopted approaches. Furthermore, earlier studies fall short of the most
recent period, not fully assessing the post-COVID-19 effects. Indeed,
while the pandemic and lockdown measures have been disastrous for
most economic sectors (IMF, 2020), tech giants have been among the
few winners.19 As economies went into meltdown, the share value of
the United States’ five biggest tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Google,

17 Cyber risk has been gradually and increasingly considered as one of the highest
operational risk concerns (See Risk.net, “Top 10 operational risks for 2018”, as well as
for 2019, 2020 and 2021).
18 According to Moodys’, the top five cash holders are US tech firms Apple, Microsoft,
Google’s parent company Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook, which held a combined $611
billion, or 27% of the total corporate cash balance at the end of 2020. Moody’s Investors
Service Research Announcement ‘Moody’s: US companies’ cash holdings hit record high
amid pandemic’ www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-US-companies-cash-holdings-hit-rec
ord-high-amid-pandemic-PBC1254533, last accessed 3 September 2022.
19 Rachel Griffin, ‘Is the COVID Pandemic a Victory for Big Tech?’ (Sciences Po,
13 August 2020) www.sciencespo.fr/public/chaire-numerique/en/2020/08/13/is-the-
covid-19-pandemic-a-victory-for-big-tech, last accessed 3 September 2022.
10 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

Microsoft, and Facebook) soared. For instance, on July 20, 2020, rising
stock prices added 13 USD billion to the fortune of Amazon CEO Jeff
Bezos (who is worth more than most countries’ GDP) in a single day.
Our results also contribute to the literature in two important ways.
First, we provide evidence that bond spreads are less sensitive to firm risk
for BigTechs. Indeed, comparing tech firms to non-tech firms allows us
to control for general advantages associated with firm size that may affect
both the level of spreads and the pricing of risk. For instance, larger firms,
regardless of the sector, may have lower funding costs due to greater
diversification, larger economies of scale, or easier access to capital markets
and liquidity in times of financial turmoil. Such general size advantages are
likely to affect the cost of funding for large firms in industries outside the
tech sector. If bond investors believe that all of the largest firms (both
tech and non-tech) are TBTF, then large non-tech firms should enjoy a
funding advantage similar to that of large tech firms. However, we find
this is not the case. We find that a substantial size funding advantage exists
for tech firms even after controlling for the effect of size on credit spreads
for non-tech firms. Our second contribution is to investigate portfolio
holdings and investors’ decisions in times of financial distress. We find
that TTTF seems to act as a hedge against global uncertainty and market
volatility. Are TTTF bonds perceived as “safe assets” from the viewpoint
of bondholders? Our results tend to suggest that they are.
From a regulatory perspective, there have been a number of policy
approaches—some complementary, some conflicting—to cope with the
TBTF problem. These include government assistance provision to prevent
TBTF firms from failing or systemic risk from spreading, enforcing
“market discipline” to ensure that investors, creditors and counterparties
curb excessive risk-taking at TBTF firms, enhancing regulation to hold
TBTF firms to stricter prudential standards, curbing firms’ size and scope,
by preventing mergers or compelling firms to divest assets, for example,
minimizing spillover effects or limiting counterparty exposure; and insti-
tuting a special resolution regime for failing systemically important firms.
A comprehensive policy is likely to incorporate more than one approach,
as some proposals are aimed at preventing failures and some at containing
fallout when a failure occurs. In the context of the TTTF, things might
not be fully transportable.
It could be argued that TBTF could be eliminated directly by reducing
the size or scope of the largest tech firms. However, it is uncertain what
 1 TOO TECH TO FAIL? 11

size limit would eliminate the TTTF subsidy—given that interconnected-

ness is a nebulous concept—and policymakers would only know if they
had set the right size limit by observing what occurs after a firm fails.
Weighed against the benefits of eliminating the TBTF problem by elim-
inating BigTech companies, the benefits to the economy that would be
lost are also disputed. In the case of reducing scope, some very large tech
firms would remain, and they would be less diversified against risk. It can
also be argued that reducing the scope is not enough. Going back in
the financial world, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are examples of large,
narrowly focused firms that many nonetheless viewed as TBTF.20
A comprehensive policy is likely to incorporate more than one
approach because different approaches are aimed at different parts of the
problem. Some approaches focus on preventive measures (i.e., keeping
TTTF firms out of trouble), whereas others are reactive (i.e., addressing
what to do in the event of a TTTF failure). Some policy approaches are
complementary; others could undermine each other. A market discipline
approach is arguably most likely to succeed if coupled with size limits,
although size limits thwart market-based profit incentives and outcomes.
Policies that involve identification of TTTF firms, such as a special regula-
tory regime, are less compatible with a market discipline approach. Efforts
to minimize spillover effects could be more effective if the TTTF firms are
regulated for safety and soundness, so that spillover effects can more easily
be identified ahead of time. Policymakers have historically coped with
the moral hazard associated with “direct or indirect insurance” through a
combination of safety and soundness regulation, a resolution regime and
limits on spillover effects. Yet TTTF poses some additional challenges to
the tech regulation model, such as the difficulties of imposing a strict
least cost resolution requirement on a resolution regime and effectively
regulating tech firms with complex and wide-ranging activities.
Each of these policy approaches cope with TTTF has strengths and
weaknesses; there is no silver bullet solution to the problem because
future policymakers face incentives to deviate from the approach to
avoid crises, please interest groups, increase technological innovation and
the availability of digital solutions, among others. Judging the relative
merits of each policy approach depends in part on which approach future
policymakers can best commit to and effectively carry out.

20 Frame W. S., White L. J., ‘Fussing and Fuming Over Fannie and Freddie: How
Much Smoke, How Much Fire?’ (2005) 19(2) Journal of Economic Perspectives 159–184.
12 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

Risk is central to economic activity, so an optimal system is probably

not one where large tech firms never fail. An optimal system is one in
which a BigTech can fail without destabilizing the economic system. The
only system that can guarantee that large firms will not cause systemic
risk is one without large firms, but a system without large firms may
be less efficient and more prone to instability from other sources. Other
approaches seek to limit systemic risk to acceptable levels. Creating a more
stable economic system by mitigating the TTTF problem may result in
digital solutions becoming more expensive and less available, at least in
the short run.
The remainder of the chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2 reviews
the relevant literature on TBTF. Section 3 describes the data used in the
analysis. The empirical strategy is presented in Sect. 4. Section 5 provides
the key results. Section 6 provides a high-level discussion on the topic of
BigTech in finance and lays out policy options. Section 7 concludes.

2 Understanding
Too-Big-To-Fail: A Short Review
Although TBTF has been a perennial policy issue, it was highlighted by
the near-collapse of several large financial firms during the GFC of 2008–
2009. The investment bank Bear Stearns, GMAC (a non-bank lender,
later renamed Ally Financial) and the AIG group avoided failure through
government assistance.21 Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank, filed
for bankruptcy after the government decided not to offer its financial
assistance. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (government-sponsored enter-
prises) entered government conservatorship and were kept solvent with
government funds. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
arranged for Wachovia (a commercial bank) and Washington Mutual (a
thrift) to be acquired by other banks without government financial assis-
tance. Citigroup and Bank of America (commercial banks) were offered
government guarantees on selected assets they owned.22
In many of these cases, policymakers justified the use of government
resources on the grounds that the firms were “systemically important”

21 Ball L., Ben S. Bernanke, Timothy F. Geithner, and Henry M. Paulson Jr.,
Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and its Lessons (2019).
22 For an overview, see the Journal of Economic Perspectives —Spring 2015.
 1 TOO TECH TO FAIL? 13

popularly called “too-big-to-fail”.23 TBTF is the concept that a firm’s

disorderly failure would cause widespread disruptions in financial markets
that could not easily be contained.24 Although the government had
no explicit policy to rescue TBTF firms, several were rescued on those
grounds once the crisis struck.25 TBTF subsequently became one of the
systemic risk issues that policymakers grappled with in the wake of the
recent crisis.
From a policy perspective, systemic risk mitigation, including elimi-
nating the TBTF problem, was a major goal of the Dodd-Frank Wall
Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which is the comprehensive
financial regulatory reform enacted in 2010. Different parts of this legisla-
tion jointly aimed at addressing the TBTF problem through requirements
for enhanced regulation for safety and soundness for “systemically impor-
tant” (also called “systemically significant”) financial institutions (SIFIs),
limits on size and the types of activities a firm can engage in,26 and the
creation of a new receivership regime for resolving failing non-banks that
pose systemic risk. In addition, Basel III, an international agreement,
placed heightened requirements on the largest banks. As of today, some
critics continue to argue that the Dodd-Frank and Basel III policy reforms
do not go far enough to solve the TBTF problem, and others argue they
have had the perverse effect of exacerbating the TBTF problem.27 Ulti-
mately, the failure of a large firm is the only test of whether the TBTF
problem still exists.
Our study fits in the new and rapidly evolving literature dealing with
TBTF issues. More precisely, we contribute to at least two main strands
of recent research.
First, this paper fits in the abundant literature on the TBTF but outside
of the financial world. We demonstrate that expectations of state support

23 “If the crisis has taught a single lesson, it is that the too-big-to-fail problem must be
resolved,” declared U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in 2010 when testifying
before the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
24 Acharya et al. (2016).
25 Sorkin A. R., Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington
Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves (Penguin 2010).
26 Including proprietary trading and hedge fund sponsorship.
27 Columbia Business School, ‘The Unintended Consequence of Basel III’ (Ideas
and Insights, September 2021) www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/chazen-global-insights/
unintended-consequence-basel-iii, last accessed April 2022.
14 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

are embedded in credit spreads on bonds issued by large US tech institu-

tions, and we call them the “Too-Tech-to-Fail” firms. While credit spreads
are risk sensitive for most financial institutions,28 our main contribution
is to show that credit spreads lack risk sensitivity for the largest BigTechs.
In other words, we find that bondholders of large tech institutions have
an expectation that the government might shield them from losses and,
as a result, they do not accurately price risk. This expectation of public
support might constitute an implicit subsidy of large BigTechs, allowing
them to borrow at government-subsidized rates.
Second, this study relates to the rapidly expanding stream of research
on “flight-to-safety” and safe assets. While the supply of safe assets,
private and public, has historically been concentrated in a small number
of advanced economies, most prominently the United States,29 we claim
that bonds issued by BigTech companies can be added to the supply of
safe assets and reduce the “safe asset shortages” issues. By investigating
portfolio holdings and investors’ decisions in times of financial distress, we
show that TTTF assets seem to act as a hedge against global uncertainty
and market volatility.

3 Data and Descriptive Statistics

Bond dataset. Our initial dataset is constructed from the ECB’s CSDB
which is a micro-financial ESCB dataset that collects monthly infor-
mation on more than six million outstanding debt securities, equities
and mutual fund shares issued by both companies residing in the euro
area and outside, between September 2013 and December 2021. The
data is from both public and commercial sources and is managed by
the ESCB. We call this dataset the CSDB dataset. We obtain all avail-
able active USD denominated corporate debt securities, issued by US
domiciliated companies. These include corporate debt, asset-backed secu-
rities (ABS), covered bonds and strips, and we exclude securitization
bonds, linked bonds30 and structured debt securities (certificates).31 The

28 Acharya et al. (2016).

29 Caballero et al. (2017).
30 Such as inflation, interest rate, asset, currency, credit-linked bonds, exchange traded
notes (ETN), exchange traded commodities (ETC).
31 As per ESA 2010 instrument class.
 1 TOO TECH TO FAIL? 15

CSDB dataset provides an extensive set of monthly information about

each security. Such information includes, although it is not limited to,
international security identification numbers, currency denomination and
prices,32 as well as a set of issuer identifiers, issuer’s sector and issuer’s
industry. On the bond side, we obtain information such as option-
adjusted yield to maturity, Macaulay duration, outstanding amount, type
of debt, currency denomination, security type (e.g., straight, securitized,
covered, perpetual, convertible or linked bond, commercial paper, etc.),
maturity date, coupon type, issue date, guarantees and securitization
status. Furthermore, on the company level, we complement the CSDB
data with balance sheet data from Bureau van Dijk—Orbis, such as market
capitalization, ROE, total assets and others. We further complement our
dataset with monthly bond credit rating information by considering the
following four credit rating agencies: Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, Fitch
Ratings and DBRS,33 and we calculate an average credit rating per bank,
based on a harmonized assessment scale, where we map the ratings of
the four CRAs into numerical values according to Abidi et al.34 We want
to keep the debt securities that fill common selection criteria presented
in the corporate bond literature.35 Accordingly, we remove from our
bond-level data all securities that have equity or derivative features, or
non-fixed coupon features such as callable, puttable, convertible bonds,
floating bonds and linked bonds. We also exclude the bonds with less than
6 months time to maturity.36 This results in a security monthly dataset
of around 18,257 bonds and 890 companies. For our funding advan-
tage analysis, we will further restrict our dataset only to securities that

32 For debt securities for which the price is unavailable (for instance, when a bond does
not trade), the price is estimated using the reference information of the security.
33 These are the external credit assessment institutions (ECAIs) according to Guideline
ECB/2014/60, that the ECB contemplates for the implementation of the Eurosystem
monetary policy framework.
34 Abidi et al. (2019); please see Appendix B for further information on the harmonised
rating scale utilized, where we map the ratings of S&P, Moodys, Fitch and DBRS into
numerical values.
35 Anginer and Yildizhan (2010), Anginer and Warburton (2014), Acharya et al.
(2016).
36 These are the bond-level data that will be further complemented in a next step, with
SHSS holdings data.
16 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

have a specific seniority, as we keep only unguaranteed senior unsecured

bonds.37
Investors sectorial quarterly portfolio holdings. We integrate to our
CSDB dataset with a security-by-security data on portfolio holdings
obtained from the ESCB SHSS,38 by matching the International Security
Identification Number (ISIN). The SHSS dataset offers a comprehensive,
fully integrated, granular information of the security holdings and trans-
actions of EA and non-EA residents. The data is collected from financial
investors and custodians on a quarterly basis by central banks in all euro
area countries and some participating non-euro area countries. It covers
all short-term and long-term debt securities, listed shares, as well as invest-
ment fund shares that are identified with a unique ISIN. This dataset will
provide us with a detailed account of EA and non-EA portfolios at the
country and sector level, and our sample period covers the quarters Q3-
2013 until Q4-2021. The data provides us with security-by-security data
with general coverage greater than 90 per cent for various holder sectors.
Investors in the SHSS dataset are defined by holder institutional
sector and holder country of domicile. We group the investor types
in 8 aggregate sectors,39 based on the European System of Accounts:
Banks, Non-Financial Corporations (NFC), Investment Funds (IVF),
Money Market Funds (MMF), Other Financial Intermediaries (OFI),40
Insurance Corporations and Pension Funds (ICPF), General Government
and Households.41 ,42 We initially keep all securities available with no
restriction in terms of country of issuance or currency denomination.
The average bond portfolio holding reported in the SHSS is between

37 The dataset contains bond-level seniority attributes, in terms of guarantee, rank and
security level; these can be classified as secured, unsecured, senior, subordinated and
others.
38 The data is collected under Regulation (EU) No 1011/2012 of the European
Central Bank of 17 October 2012 concerning statistics on holdings of securities
(ECB/2012/24) www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/legal/pdf/, last accessed 3 September 2022.
39 Please see (BIS, ECB and IMF (2015) for a more precise outline on definitions of
institutional unit and residence, and the allocation of institutional units to sectors and
subsectors.
40 Including important intermediaries such as mutual funds and hedge funds.
41 We exclude Unclassified as well as Non-EA other than Central Bank & Government
and Non-EA Central Bank & Government.
42 Please see ECB (2016), Hüser A. C., Kok C. (2019) for further insight on
breakdown of sectorial holdings of unsecured bank debt securities.
 1 TOO TECH TO FAIL? 17

approximately 3 and 35 EUR million. We obtain a quarter-holder-security

sample, keep only bonds that have a fixed coupon (exclude bonds with
features such as callable, puttable, convertible bonds, floating bonds and
linked bonds) and drop bonds that have a time to maturity of less than
6 months. We finally complement this dataset with the VIX Index as well
as the Composite Index of Systemic Stress Index (CISS). This results in a
comprehensive dataset of 41,136 bonds issued by 2,802 companies and
2,820,882 holder-country observations between Q3-2013 and Q4-2021.
An important step in our analysis is to group the companies in terms of
size and sector, in order to homogeneously identify the BigTech compa-
nies, we explore multiple measures of firm size. The one that fits best
our purpose is to classify a company as “big”, when it falls in the top
95th percentile ranked by market cap in a given year. A second method
is whether a company is one of the five/ten largest ones in terms of size
in a given year.43 A challenge we face is to obtain a corporate sectorial
classification that captures the FAAMG or BigTech companies,44 in the
same technology sectorial group. Indeed, the conventional industry clas-
sification taxonomies, based on hierarchical industry classification systems,
provide different classification across these companies. For instance, the
Bloomberg Industry Classification System (BICS) allocates Apple and
Microsoft in the group “Technology” (or numerically 19) as per its
Level 1 Sector Code, while Amazon is classified in the group “Consumer
Discretionary”, and Alphabet in “Communications”.45 We, therefore,
modify the original BICS sectorial “Technology” group, and we add the
companies that have the classification that fits the one of the FAAMG
or BigTech companies. We do that by looking into the step 4 of the
hierarchical industry classification system, which provides the most gran-
ular view, and including companies classified as “Online Marketplace” and
“Internet Media & Services”.46

43 A third measure would be the size (log of total assets) of a company in a given year,
but this is not always capturing the traditional BigTech companies, given their nature.
44 Abbreviation for five top-performing tech stocks in the market, namely Meta
(formerly Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google.
45 The same happens with MSCI’s GICS, Global Industry Classification Standard, a
four-tiered hierarchical industry classification system, as Apple and Microsoft are classified
as “Information Technology” while Amazon and Alphabet are allocated in “Consumer
Discretionary” and “Communication Services”, respectively.
46 Referenced as 11121210, and 10101410, respectively.
18 N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

Table 1 provides descriptive statistics about the securities included in

our baseline regression sample. We cluster the bonds into three groups—
BigTech, Small Tech and the rest of the market (excluding any tech
company). For bonds, we report statistics on the yield to maturity (with a
median of 2.63% over our period for bonds issued by BigTech companies,
which is lower than the 3.23% of the Small Tech) and the time to matu-
rity (median residual maturity is around 7 years for the bonds issued by
BigTech companies which is slightly higher than the rest of the market).
On average, compared to Small Tech and the rest of the market, BigTech
bonds have overall (i) larger issuances (in terms of amount outstanding)
and (ii) lower yields. In terms of size, BigTech companies are larger than
Small Tech companies and the rest of the market by a factor of about 16
and 30, respectively. It is finally important to note that the leverage (as
measured by Debt-to-Assets) of BigTech companies is the lowest among
the three groups.Table 1 provides descriptive statistics about the securi-
ties included in our baseline regression sample. We cluster the bonds into
three groups—BigTech, Small Tech and the rest of the market (excluding
any tech company). For bonds, we report statistics on the yield to matu-
rity (with a median of 2.63% over our period for bonds issued by BigTech
companies, which is lower than the 3.23% of the Small Tech) and the time
to maturity (median residual maturity is around 7 years for the bonds
issued by BigTech companies which is slightly higher than the rest of the
market). On average, compared to Small Tech and the rest of the market,
BigTech bonds have overall (i) larger issuances (in terms of amount
outstanding) and (ii) lower yields. In terms of size, BigTech companies
are larger than Small Tech companies and the rest of the market by a
factor of about 16 and 30, respectively. It is finally important to note that
the leverage (as measured by Debt-to-Assets) of BigTech companies is the
lowest among the three groups.
Figure 1 shows the evolution of the cost of market-based funding
across the three groups from January 2014 to December 2022. Among
the tech industry, the difference between BigTech and Small Tech is
large and persistent—about a 1% throughout the period covered. The
figure also reveals that the adjusted yields of BigTech securities drastically
decreased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in sharp contrast
with the other groups of bonds. Finally, and more generally, BigTech and
the rest of the market adjusted yields have been initially close, though the
BigTech cost of funding has been decoupling from the rest of the market
Table 1 Summary statistics

Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev Min Max P25 P50 P75

BigTech Bond Price 8403 104.84 10.11 82.32 143.95 99.09 102.02 107.83
Log Bond Price 8403 4.65 0.09 4.41 4.97 4.6 4.63 4.68
Amount 8403 1590 880 2.535 3500 1000 1380 2000
Outstanding
(USD, Mn.)
Time-to-maturity 8403 4676 4230 180 14961 1296 2532 8890
(days)
Yield-to-maturity 8403 2.54 1.23 0.18 8.41 1.7 2.63 3.39
(bonds option
adj)
Market 32 771000 573000 144000 2040000 350000 583000 1020000
Capitalisation
(USD, Mn.)
ROE 30 37.28 24.67 −1.03 102.68 20.18 28.44 47.85
Debt to 30 1.21 1.06 0.1 5.59 0.62 1.21 1.37
EBITDA
Debt to Assets 30 0.5 0.2 0.12 0.81 0.4 0.53 0.61
1

Price to Book 30 21.97 12.1 −0.13 42.3 6.26 25.93 29.26

Ratio

(continued)
TOO TECH TO FAIL?
19
 20

Table 1 (continued)

Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev Min Max P25 P50 P75

Small Bond Price 43790 107.19 11.04 82.32 143.95 100.38 104.03 111.23
Tech
Log Bond Price 43790 4.67 0.1 4.41 4.97 4.61 4.64 4.71
Amount 43790 941 836 1.75 3500 400 700 1250
Outstanding
(USD, Mn.)
Time-to-maturity 43790 4037 3898 180 30682 1445 2603 6012
(days)
Yield-to-maturity 43790 3.32 1.53 0.18 8.41 2.23 3.23 4.36
(bonds option
adj)
N. ABIDI AND I. MIQUEL-FLORES

Market 579 46500 68200 191 376000 6450 16600 50500

Capitalisation
(USD, Mn.)
ROE 482 39.52 101.19 −278.53 935.57 8.59 19.3 38.78
Debt to 525 2.95 11.11 −11.95 252.2 1.26 2.16 3.35
EBITDA
Debt to Assets 526 0.59 0.22 0.08 1.57 0.46 0.57 0.68
Price to Book 531 15.31 16.56 −64.87 64.81 4.25 15.39 25.46
Ratio
Market Bond Price 500443 105.79 10.56 82.32 143.95 99.83 102.48 109.21
ex-Tech
Log Bond Price 500443 4.66 0.09 4.41 4.97 4.6 4.63 4.69
 Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev Min Max P25 P50 P75

Amount 500443 464 601 1.75 3500 30 300 600

Outstanding
(USD, Mn.)
Time-to-maturity 500443 3140 3358 180 36508 991 1980 3606
(days)
Yield-to-maturity 500443 2.91 1.61 0.18 8.41 1.66 2.76 3.91
(bonds option
adj)
Market 4504 25600 48100 0.0032 437000 3020 8890 25000
Capitalisation
(USD, Mn.)
ROE 4071 20.63 69.14 −893.27 949.3 6.36 14.03 25.99
Debt to 3528 3.32 29.34 −1571.66 535.13 1.79 2.93 4.76
EBITDA
Debt to Assets 3530 0.56 0.21 0.02 2.75 0.44 0.53 0.65
Price to Book 4108 11.71 20.65 −99.76 97.81 3.88 10.45 18.54
Ratio

This table represents the summary statistics for the CSDB dataset and company level fundamentals from 2014 to 2021. On a bond level, we make use
1

of a micro-financial ESCB dataset namely the CSDB. It is collected on a security-by-security basis and provides information on securities. Furthermore,
we provide descriptive statistics of the bond issuer company, with balance sheet information obtained from Bureau Van Dijk—Orbis. The summary
statistics are grouped by BigTech, Small Tech and Market ex-Tech (the rest of the market, excluding technological companies). The data covers the
period between September 2013 and December 2021. Source Bloomberg, ECB (CSDB), authors’ calculations
TOO TECH TO FAIL?
21
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Veikaten vihille
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Veikaten vihille

Romaani

Author: Kaarlo Terhi

Release date: August 29, 2023 [eBook #71520]

Language: Finnish

Original publication: Hämeenlinna: Arvi A. Karisto, 1915

Credits: Juhani Kärkkäinen and Tapio Riikonen

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VEIKATEN

VIHILLE ***
VEIKATEN VIHILLE

Romaani

Kirj.

KAARLO TERHI

Hämeenlinnassa, Arvi A. Karisto, 1915.

ENSIMÄINEN LUKU.

Esimerkki siitä, että ihmisen ei ole hyvä yksinänsä olla.

Niin oikein! Kravatistahan se alkoikin koko juttu. Mutta nyt, kun

kaikki on onnellisesti ohitse, on aika ihmetellä, miten noin
vähäpätöinen esine voi niin korkeat asiat matkaan saattaa.

Meitä istui Kallenpäivillä v. 1920 seurue herroja ja naisia. Sanon

kiusallakin herroja ensiksi, sillä vaikka valitettavasti mies tavallisesti
joutuukin naisen komennettavaksi, on hän toki nimellisesti aina
vaimon pää ja luomakunnan herra.

Minä olin pitkin iltaa kääntänyt puoleeni suurimman

huomaavaisuuden — naisten taholta. Poikamiehenä sanon sen
ylpeydellä, vaikken olekaan taipuvainen kallistamaan korviani
imartelulle. Vihdoin alkoi kuitenkin tuntua, etteivät seurustelulahjani
yksin kyenneet hankkimaan minulle moista etuoikeutta. Jotakin
mahtoi olla vinossa, siihen viittasi naisten salaperäinen supattelu ja
hillitty tirskuminen.

Herrat olivat vetäytyneet sivuhuoneeseen tupakoimaan.

Tupakkaraittiina jäin nauttimaan naisseurasta, mutta iloni ei tullut
pitkäaikaiseksi. Minua läheni taidemaalari Sutisen rouva, yhtä
tunnettu kauneudestaan kuin purevasta kielestään. Ottaen kaikkein
herttaisimman ilmeen hän kumarsi ja sanoi:

"Herraseni! Oletteko vilkaissut peiliin?"

"En. Pidän kuvastimeen kurkistelemista naisten yksinoikeutena",

vastasin mielestäni purevasti.

Kuitenkin alkoi asemani tuntua kiusalliselta. Kun nainen

suosittelee miehelle kuvastinta, lienee luomakunnan herralla hullusti
asiat. Ajattelin pistäytyä sivuhuoneeseen, mutta suloinen rouva
kysyi:

"Ettekö ole ajatellut mennä naimisiin?"

Mietin hetken ja vastasin:

"Ajatellut! Olen — ja siksi jäinkin naimattomaksi."

Viekas rouva tirkisteli minua toisella silmällään salaperäisesti

hymyillen ja sanoi:

"Olisi hyvä, jos joku huolehtisi teidän ulkoasustanne!"

Tämä letkaus selvitti aseman. Jotakin oli epäkunnossa. Olinko

saanut mustepilkun nenänpäähäni, oliko kaulukseni likainen,
kävelikö hämähäkki selässäni?

Perinpohjin masentuneena etsin turvaa tupakkahuoneesta.

Takanani kuulin rouvien naurun. Naurunko? Ei, se ei ollut kristillistä
naurua, se oli kikatusta. Niin voivat vain naiset nauraa poloisen
vanhanpojan kustannuksella. Lähenin erästä tuttua ja sanoin:
"Lainaahan, veliseni, hieman peiliä."

"Peiliä! Olenko minä keimailijatar, joka käy peili taskussa!"

Tyly vastaus kohteliaaseen pyyntööni nosti sisuani. Minä

suutahdin.

"Mille hitolle täällä sitte virnistellään koko ilta?"

Tuttavani hymähti säälivästi:

"Niin että millekö virnistellään? Kravattisi istuu niskassa!"

Muistin eteisen kuvastimen ja syöksyin sinne. Turha vaiva! Neljä

rouvaa seisoi sen ääressä kurkistellen itseään edestä ja takaa. He
eivät minun tuloani huomanneet. Enkä minäkään heitä häirinnyt
hyvin luvallisissa hommissaan.

Kopeloin rintamuksiani ja otin esiin pahennusta tuottaneen

kravattini. Niskassa se ei kyllä ollut, mutta ei paljoa paremminkaan.
Sovitin sen paikalleen niin hyvin kuin taisin ilman kuvastinta ja lähdin
kaupungille.

Kello oli vasta kahdeksan. Yksinäiseen, kolkkoon nuorenmiehen

kotiini ei minua miellyttänyt mennä. Tein nopean päätöksen ja
pistäysin ravintolaan. Siellä istui muutamia vieraita. Sivuhuoneesta
kuului lasien kilinää ja äänekästä puhelua. Silmäilin hajamielisenä
ruokalistaa, vaikkei minua haluttanut syödä eikä juoda. Äkkiä kuulin
tuttuja ääniä ja päätin liittyä seuraan, toivoen nyreyteni paremmin
haihtuvan.
 Pienessä tupakansavun samentamassa huoneessa istui puolisen
tusinaa herrasmiehiä, Kallenpäiviä viettämässä kai hekin. Useimmat
olivat aviomiehiä sitä lajia, joka tavallisesti kantaa vihkisormustansa
liivintaskussa, saadaksensa kapakassa korvausta menetetystä
vapaudestaan.

Minut vastaanotettiin avosylin. Huomasin, että he aikoivat varata

minulle hovinarrin paikan. Kamreeri Holopainen, vanha veitikka,
alotti:

"Terveeks, Kalle—vanhapoika! Onneks olkoon!" Ja hän syleili

minua innoissaan.

"Terve teille, te jalot sankarit — tohvelisankarit tarkoitan!" pistin

minä katkaistakseni jo alussa heidän pilkkansa kärjen.

Kysyivät, mitä minä suvaitsen. Heillä oli rahaa, he maksavat.

Sanoin, etten ole juomaretkellä, tunnen väsymystä ja lähden kotiin
nukkumaan. Mutta he vakuuttivat, että siitä ei tule mitään, ei niin
kerrassaan mitään. Koska olen Kalle, on minun juotava heidän
onnekseen, ja he kallistavat minun terveydekseni.

Alistuin kohtalooni, painoin puuta ja kuuntelin heidän

hävyttömyyksillä höystettyjä sukkeluuksiaan, vaikka suoraan sanoen
minua ei mikään niin iletä kuin humalaisten lavertelut.

"No, miten se vanhanpojan rakkaus palaa?" kysäisi muuan.

Pilkkanauru seurasi kysymystä, vaikka minä en siinä pienintäkään

sukkeluutta tajunnut. Koska en sattunut olemaan leikkisällä tuulella,
annoin vastaiskun:
 "Ovatkos herrat saaneet rouviltaan luvan olla ulkona näin
myöhään?"

Heillä takertui nauru kurkkuun vähäksi aikaa. Mutta kohta he

alkoivat pommittaa minua järeällä tykistöllä. Tekivät kaikenmoisia
häijyjä kysymyksiä, väittivät minun puhelevan yksikseni ja
valehtelevan itseni nuoremmaksi kuin olen, — julkesivatpa
salakähmäisesti letkaista sillä, että minulla muka oli jonkunlaisia
hellempiä välejä vuokrarouvani kanssa. Maksoin samalla mitalla,
mutta lopulta oli minun peräydyttävä ylivoiman tieltä hyvässä
järjestyksessä. Mietin tekosyytä luikkiakseni seurasta; ylpeyteni ei
näet sallinut minun myöntää, että olin sortunut tappiolle.

Mutta samassa kysäisi muuan herroista:

"Mikähän siihen on syynä, ettei tuosta Kallesta tytöt huoli?"

Ja he lähtivät arvaamaan, miksi naiset muka halveksivat minua.

Siinäkös noukittiin kaikki minun virheeni ja heikkouteni, sekä
sisälliset että ulkonaiset. Lopputulokseksi jäi, ettei vielä ollut syntynyt
niin hullua naista, joka minun muijakseni suostuisi.

Mutta nyt oli minulta kärsivällisyys lopussa. Jymäytin nyrkkini

pöytään ja lausuin:

"Kuka teistä lyö vetoa siitä, etten minä ole naimisissa ennen
tämän vuoden loppua?"

Aviomiesten joukossa syntyi ääretön hälinä. Joka taholta

ojennettiin minua kohden käsiä:

"Minä lyön! Minä myös! Ja minä!"

 Ehdotin vetoa tuhannesta markasta. Mutta kun he näkivät, millä
päättäväisyydellä minä esitin asian, vetivät he kätensä pois yksi
toisensa jälkeen. Lopuksi oli vain Holopaisen käsi koholla.

Minä tingin viisisataa, mutta hän epäröi.

"Lyö! Voitat sinä, varmasti voitat. Kuka tuosta hakoniskasta

huolisi", yllyttivät toiset.

Holopainen lupasi lyödä sadasta markasta. Vaikka pidinkin

summaa pienenä, suostuin kumminkin lopuksi. Toverit eroittivat
kädet.

Vedonlyönnin synnyttämä jännitys vaikutti, että minä sain hetkeksi

jäädä rauhaan. Käytin tilaisuutta ja lähdin pois. Hyvästi jättäessäni
tarjouduin:

"Jos joku herroista on ilman portinavainta, niin hän voi tilata sen
minun välitykselläni."

Omituisessa mielentilassa laskeusin portaita. Lisäksi satuin

puolipimeässä käytävässä törmäämään suunnattomaan
möhömahaan, joka puhisten kuin moottorivaunu ajelehti minua kohti.
Vaikka törmäys oli tavaton, ei tuo norsu hievahtanutkaan, jota
vastoin minä viskauduin tolalta kappaleen matkaa. Ja vaikka minä
olin loukattu puoli, muljotti otus minuun kuin härkä ja karjaisi:

"Aasi!"

"En ole tiedustellut teidän sukuperäänne", sanoin minä ja jatkoin

matkaani, viisaasti välttäen uutta yhteentörmäystä.
 Kadulla teki tuuli minulle sen kiusan, että riisti lakin päästäni ja
pyöritti pitkin käytävää. Juostuani karkulaisen perässä pari kilometriä
sain sen kiinni. Kotiportilla huomasin unohtaneeni avaimen
arkipuvun taskuun. Kiusaannustani lisäsi se, että vastikään olin
tehnyt pilaa aviomiehistä ja nyt sain kokea, miten poikamieskin voi
jäädä portin taakse.

Käveltyäni tunnin paikkeille talon edustalla tuli muuan neitonen

kotiin kavaljeerinsa saattamana. Heidän kuherteluansa portin
pielessä kesti tarkkaan laskettuna tunnin ja kolme neljännestä. Vilu
vihdoin ajoi kotiin, ja samalla pääsin minä portin sisäpuolelle. Kun
pimeitä portaita noustessani otin esiin sähkölamppuni, huomasin
patterin olevan lopussa. Kauvan kopeloituani löysin oven ja sovitin
avainta reikään. Se ei kuitenkaan mistään hinnasta onnistunut. Aloin
kaikin voimin röykyttää ovea. Kun ei sekään auttanut, soitin
vimmatusti ovikelloa. Vihdoin ilmestyi eteiseen valoa, ja äreä
herrasmies alusvaatteissaan ärjäisi:

"Kuka tänne soittaa sydänyönä!"

Pyysin parituhatta kertaa anteeksi ja lähdin kompuroimaan

alaspäin — olin näet noussut porrasvälin liikaa.

Olin siis vihdoin onnellisesti omassa huoneessani. Jättäen silleen

sellaiset pikkukiusat kuin että huone oli kylmä kuin kellari ja lamppu
ilman öljyä, heittäysin raskaasti huoaten tuolille. Kuten Job kirosi
syntymäpäivänsä, sadatin minä nimipäivääni.

Aloin riisuutua. Riuhtasin onnettoman kravatin kaulastani ja

viskasin kaikella voimallani nurkkaan. Ajattelin polttaa sen roviolla,
mutta muistin, että se oli uusi ja markan seitsemänkymmenenviiden
pennin hintainen. Se sai siis armon.
 Paneuduin maata kovalle, yksinäiselle vanhanpojan vuoteelle,
mutta uni ei tullut silmään. Naisten nauru, miesten pistosanat soivat
yhä korvissani. Ja sekasorron keskeltä kaikui hornan henkien kuoro,
aivan kuin olisi legioona pikkupiruja kaikissa sävellajeissa, duurissa
ja mollissa kirkunut:

"Naimisiin! Naimisiin! Sinun pitää mennä naimisiin! Kuuletko,

vanhapoika!"

Taistelin terhakasti vastaan, mutta paholaisjoukko piiritti minua,

näytti pitkäänenää ja virnisteli:

"Naimisiin siitä, vanhapoika — jos joku sinusta huolii!"

Sinä iltana minä otin lopullisen, ratkaisevan askeleen: päätin

mennä avioliittoon… Pinttyneinkään vanhapoika ei olisi minun
asemassani voinut toisin tehdä.

Tähän päätökseen päästyäni valtasi koko olemukseni ihmeellinen

rauha.
Kiihtyneet hermoni tyyntyivät, minä nukuin kuin pölkky.

Herättyäni en alussa muistanut, mitä edellisenä päivänä oli

tapahtunut. Vähitellen virkosi kaikki mieleeni; onneton kravatti,
vedonlyönti, yhteentörmäys möhömahan kanssa, seikkailu
rappusissa ja lopuksi tärkeä päätökseni. Ja minä sanoin:

"Mikä on päätetty, se on päätetty! En minä ole se mies, joka

sanastani peräydyn."

Lukija tietenkin nauraa arvellen, että minä olen puhunut itseni

pussiin. Eihän sitä naimisiin niin vaan mennä. Sillä kuten kasteen
sakramenttiin kuuluu kaksi asiaa: vesi ja lapsi, niin tarvitaan
avioliitossakin kaksi riitapuolta: mies ja nainen.

Maltappa, rakas lukija! Tiedossani on tyttö ja hyvä, kunhan ehdin

hakea hänet käsiini. Toivoakseni jo seuraavassa luvussa voin esitellä
hänet.
TOINEN LUKU.

Lukija tutustuu maailman viehättävimpään tyttöön.

Ehkenpä sattumalta tunnettekin lemmittyni, Katrini tarkoitan. Mutta

hyvä on, jos ette astu väliimme. Olenpa hieman mustasukkainen
hänen tähtensä. Sillä totta puhuen: kunniallisempaa tyttöä ette löydä
hakemallakaan. En ainakaan minä ole löytänyt. Tässä ei kelpaa se
vanha veruke, että omaansa kukin kiittää. Kun minä sanon
Katristani, että hän on paras tyttö maailmassa, on se tosiasia, johon
ei tarvitse lisätä muuta kuin jaa ja aamen.

Nuori hän on ja herttainen. Ja sydän puhdasta kultaa. Se jo

merkitsee jotain. Sillä kun jokainen vuosi vie osan naisen ulkonaista
suloa, kehittyvät jalon luonteen avut päivä päivältä yhä suurempaan
täydellisyyteen.

Tietysti ei pistäisi päähäni mennä väittämään Katrista, että hän on

pyhimys tai enkeli. Päinvastoin on hänellä pikku heikkoutensa
niinkuin muillakin kuolevaisilla. Hänen pahin vikansa on se, että hän
on köyhä, kovin köyhä. Ja paljonhan niitä Jumala paratkoon on
ihmisiä, jotka eivät koskaan voi antaa anteeksi niin pahaa rikosta
kuin köyhyys on. Niinpä sanoivatkin tuttavani usein, että minun
pitäisi ottaa rikas tyttö, jos kerran aion avioliittoon. Se on muka ainoa
keino, millä mies nykyaikana voi luoda itselleen vakiintuneen
aseman. Itse olivat he järjestään hakeneet varakkaan siipan ja
viettivät mukavia päiviä tämän turvissa. Mutta, nähkääs, minussa oli
vielä hitunen n.s. ihanteellisuutta. Ymmärsin, ettei raha yksin pysty
onnea luomaan.

Tutustuminen Katriini tapahtui neljä, viisi vuotta sitten, ja jonkun

verran romantillisissa olosuhteissa.

Opintoaikoinani olin puutteen pakoittamana joutunut kuoron

johtajaksi — se toimi tuotti kokonaista 30 markkaa kuukaudessa.
Laulajien parvessa näin hänet ensi kerran. Niin helkkyvää ääntä kuin
Katrilla ei ollut kellään. Hän ei laulanut vain äänellä — hänen koko
sielunsa eli sävelissä. Kun katseeni milloin sattumalta kohtasi hänet,
punehtui hän, ja hänen silmänsä painuivat alas.

Kuoroni esiintyi kerran kirkkokonsertissa. Laulunumeroiden välissä

oli urkusonaatti. Esityksen kestäessä istuivat laulajat parvella, mutta
Katri oli hiipinyt erään tyhjän penkin päähän. Katri ei näköjään
huomannut minua, mutta miten lieneekään: andante'n aikana
kohtasimme toisemme penkin keskikohdalla. Tunsin hetken tulleen.
Otin Katrin käden omaani, likistin sitä kauan ja kuiskasin: "Katri,
rakastan teitä!" Hän punastui, katsoi toisaalle eikä vastannut
sanaakaan. Vihdoin hän kääntyi ja katsoi minua kauan ja tutkivasti,
ikäänkuin kysyen: "Onko se totta?" Sitten hän puristi kättäni kovaa ja
kiihkeästi, virkkamatta sanaakaan. Siitä hetkestä kuljimme yhdessä,
mihin menimmekään. Me emme koskaan puhelleet avioliitosta,
vaikka emme ajatelleet muuta kuin sitä.

Vuodet vierivät, ratkaisu lykkäytyi. Rakkauden rinnalle oli astunut

toinen suuri elämänkysymys, jota minä en voinut tyydyttävästi
järjestää, niin paljon kuin olinkin ponnistellut — leipäkysymys.

Olin menestyksellä suorittanut opintoni, mutta en onnistunut

saamaan "vakinaista". Missä ikään vilahti leivänsyrjä näkyviin, siihen
iskivät heti kymmenet kädet. Kilpailun kiihkeydessä minut sysättiin
syrjään — se oli elämän laki, ankara ja säälimätön.

Vihdoin toki pääsin väliaikaisesti erään sanomalehden

toimitukseen, mutta sain pian potkut artikkelin vuoksi, jota pidettiin
liian vapaamielisenä. Tämä kolaus pani minut miettimään, eikö
vanhoillisuus löisi paremmin leiville. Kuitenkin kaikitenkin jätin sillä
kertaa sanomalehtimiehen uran sikseen. Sen sijaan aloin sommitella
romaaneja, osittain hyvinkin paksuja, joissa oli kiihkeitä
lemmenkohtauksia ja moni kärsi surkean kuoleman rakkautensa
tähden — lukuunottamatta niitä, jotka tapaturmaisesti menettivät
henkensä. Mutta kustantajat palauttivat säännöllisesti
käsikirjoitukseni sillä huomautuksella, että tekeleeni potivat pitkälle
kehittynyttä taiteellisen keskityksen puutetta ja parantumatonta
luonnonkuvauksen pintapuolisuutta. Sepustelin sitte näytelmiä,
ilveilyjä, joille minä itse nauroin vatsani kipeäksi, ja murhenäytelmiä,
joita lukiessani itkin niin surkeasti, että naapurit tulivat kysymään,
onko joku tehnyt minulle pahaa. Mutta kun vein tuotteeni
teatterinjohtajille, sanottiin niiden olevan mahdottomia ja näyttämölle
kelpaamattomia — elleivät kukaties soveltuisi johonkin
laitakaupungin elävienkuvien teatteriin.

Moiset vastoinkäymiset panivat epäilemään koko

kirjailijakutsumustani.

Mutta elettävä sitä oli sittenkin. Antamalla yksityisopetusta

soitannossa, julkaisemalla siirappisia rakkausrunoja, jotka
luonnollisesti olivat Katrille omistettuja, pääsin päivästä toiseen.
Mutta joka sellaisilla tuloilla ajattelisi perhettä perustaa, se vain lisäsi
nälkätaiteilija-parin moniin entisiin.

Eräänä aamuna pari viikkoa edellisessä luvussa kuvatun

tapauksen jälkeen sain kirjeen ruusunpunaisessa kuoressa. Käsialan
tunsin jo kaukaa. Avasin kirjeen ja luin:

"Kalle kulta!

Ethän sinä tullutkaan sunnuntai-iltana hakemaan minua, kuten oli

puhe. Toivoakseni et ottanut vakavalta kannalta sitä pientä pilaa,
minkä tuhmasti kyllä kohdistin sinuun. Luulitko tosissasi minun
aikovan rikkoa välimme senvuoksi, että sinä sanoit Elsa Ihalalla
olevan kiehtovan katseen? Eihän mokomasta asiasta maksa
vaivaa riidellä, vallankin kun koko väitteesi on tuulesta temmattu.
Jos olisit suudellut minua, olisi koko juttu ollut kuitattu. Sen sijaan
sinä aloit pitää kauheata ripitystä, käyttäen tekstinä nais-
sukupuolen heikkouksia. Voi sinua, vanhapoika! Sinä et ensinkään
ymmärrä naisia, vaikka niin paljon kirjoitat ja puhut heistä.

Apropos! Mamma menee iltapäivällä hartauskokoukseen, ja olisi

tässä joutilasta aikaa pistäytyä siellä. Minulla on jotakin hauskaa
sinulle. Vakuutan että tulet iloiseksi.

Näkemiin! Tuhannet tervehdykset ja tulisimmat suudelmat omalta

Katriltasi.

P.S. Suutelin kirjettä ennenkuin suljin sen, mutta muste oli

tuoretta, ja tahrasin suuni. Sen vuoksi tuli kirjekin hiukan suttunen."

Kun ovikello kuuden tienoissa soi, menin itse aukaisemaan, sillä

syystä tai toisesta ei ruokarouvani oikein pitänyt siitä, että minun
luonani kävi naisvieraita.

Yhtä iloisena ja kukoistavana Katri tuli kuin ennenkin. Hänellä oli

kädessä jotakin paperiin käärittynä. Minä arvasin, että siinä se yllätys
oli, mutta en tahtonut uteliaisuuttani paljastaa.

"Arvaahan, mitä tässä on?"

Minä en rohjennut edes yrittää.

"Tästä piti tulla Kallenpäivä-lahja, mutta en saanut sitä valmiiksi,

kun lanka loppui kesken."

Hän avasi käärön ja piti sitä ylhäällä. Se oli seinäkudos, johon oli
ommeltu soma mökki pienen lammen rannalla. Tuvan ikkunasta kiilui
tuli, takasta tuprusi sininen savu kohden korkeutta.

Mieleni valtasi liikutus, sanoin selittämätön onnellisuus. Katri oli

kutonut oman sielunsa hienoimmista säikeistä lahjan.

"Miellyttääkö se sinua?" kysyi hän.

"Sehän on suurenmoinen! Idylli, runo kankaalla!"

"Runo!" kuiskasi hän.

"Niin. Siinä on runoutta enemmän kuin kaikissa minun

lemmenlirkutuksissani yhteensä. Sinä ansaitset siitä ylimääräisen
suudelman."

Katri punastui ja sanoi:

"Yhden…!"
 "Kaksi… kolme… neljä… viisi…"

Ja minä suutelin häntä kerran toisensa perään — montako, sitä ei

kumpikaan muistanut, koska Katri ei koskaan saanut suudelmista
kyllikseen.

Kiinnitimme kudoksen väliaikaisesti parilla nuppineulalla seinälle

vastapäätä vuodettani. Katri tahtoi, että minä näkisin sen heti
aamusin herätessäni.

Vaikka Katri olikin puhelias, huomasi helposti, että hänellä oli

jotakin sydämellään. Kysyin, oliko jotain tapahtunut, mutta hän istui
ja katseli alaspäin. Vihdoin hän alotti:

"On ikävää, kun ihmistä täällä maailmassa ymmärretään ja

tuomitaan väärin. Ei tahdota ottaa huomioon, että olosuhteet usein
pakoittavat menettelemään toisin kuin tahto olisi."

"Katri-kulta, minä en käsitä…"

Hän istui kauan ääneti.

"Me olemme luvanneet olla suoria toisiamme kohtaan, salaamatta

mitään ajatustamme tai tunnettamme. Sen vuoksi tahdon olla
rehellinen. Ihmiset puhuvat paljon ja monenlaista siitä, että me näin
kauan olemme seurustelleet ilman…"

Tiesin sanomattakin aivan hyvin, miten jatko olisi kuulunut.

"Mutta eihän meitä voida syyttää mistään", sanoin minä ja tunsin,

että sanoissani ilmeni sisällinen kiihtymys.
 "Minä en yleensä välitä siitä, mitä ihmiset minusta ajattelevat ja
puhuvat, kun itse tiedän tehneeni oikein. Mutta käsitäthän, ettei ole
hauska joutua väärin ymmärretyksi. Sitä paitsi on äitini sanonut, että
meidän on erottava tai…

"Mentävä naimisiin", lisäsin minä. "Hyvä — minä olen jo tehnytkin

ratkaisevan päätöksen. Sen asian suhteen saat olla aivan huoleton,
Katri-kulta."

Sanojeni vaikutus oli ihmeellinen. Katri kavahti pystyyn, kietaisi

kätensä kaulaani ja sanoi:

"Tarkoitatko todella, mitä sanot? Mikä sinut siihen päähän sai?"

Selitin, että se oli pakosta niinkuin köyhän kuolema. Olin lyönyt

vetoa, että olisin naimisissa ennen vuoden loppua. Mutta sitäpä ei
minun olisi pitänyt mennä sanomaan. Katri kävi kovin surulliseksi ja
pahoitteli:

"Hyi, Kalle! Joutavan vedon tähden! Sinä olet pettänyt minut."

Vähemmästäkin voi naiselle tulla kyyneleet silmiin. Koetin

lohdutella:

"Elähän itke, Katri-kulta! Ei se ollut yksin veto. Siihen oli muitakin

syitä."

"Esimerkiksi?"

Viivytin tahallani vastausta.

"Muun muassa se, että… että minä… että minä niin kamalasti
rakastan sinua."
 Katri päästi vallattoman, iloisen naurun. Ja kietoen taas kätensä
kaulaani hän puheli:

"Nyt sinä kerrankin puhut järkevästi. Mutta miten järjestämme sen

toisen…"

"Niin senkö leipäkysymyksen? Minä olen tuumaillut, että ehkä me

aluksi tulemme paljaalla rakkaudella toimeen. Vai mitä sinä arvelet?"

Hän katsoi minua silmiin niin totisena, etten milloinkaan uskonut

nuoren tytön voivan näyttää niin vakavalta. Sitte hän sanoi:

"Mitäkö arvelen? Sitä, että rakkaus ainakin auttaa meitä

voittamaan vaikeudet, mitä laatua ne lienevätkin."

Puhelimme vielä kauan rakkaudesta ja leivästä, ja kun väsyimme

siihen, keskustelimme leivästä ja rakkaudesta. Vihdoin sanoin minä:

"Luulenpa, että sinä äsken teit pienen kiertoliikkeen."

Katri nauroi ja sanoi:

"Entä jos teinkin. Mutta sanoppa, eikö manööverini onnistunut."

Nipistin häntä korvasta ja sanoin:

"Eipä käy kieltäminen, sinä pikku strateegi. Mutta lopullisesti en

minä vielä ole voitettu."

Hän otti taas ankaran juhlallisen ilmeen ja sanoi:

"Luulen, että sinä ymmärrät minut väärin. Arvelet kenties minun

tulleen tänne kosimistarkoituksissa. Ei, kyllä sittenkin on paras, että
erotaan lopullisesti. Äitikin arveli…"
 Hän oli muuttunut kysymysmerkiksi, arvoitukseksi.

"Ei, Katriseni", sanoin minä, "me emme eroa, Minä olen tehnyt
päätökseni, enkä peruuta sitä. Ja sitä paitsi… veto… tiedäthän…"

Katri tukisti minua ja sanoi:

"Joko taas se veto! Hyi! En tahdo enää kuulla siitä. Pane se

mieleesi!"

Parin viikon perästä olimme Katrin kanssa onnellisesti kihloissa.

Sormukset, joita vaihdettiin, olivat puhdasta kultaa; siitä oli
kultaseppä luvannut kolmen vuoden takuun. Ja että rakkaus, joka
meitä yhdisti, oli oikeata, väärentämätöntä, siitä minä menen
elinkautiseen takuuseen. Pankaa se sydämellenne, te herrat naisten
narraajat, Don Juanit, jotka kuutamoiltoina porttikäytävissä
lemmenvaloja vannotte ja toisena päivänä rakastettunne
kohdatessanne hämillänne sanotte: "Taisin tulla illalla puhuneeksi
roskaa. Suokaa se minulle anteeksi, neiti! Minä peruutan jokikisen
sanan."
KOLMAS LUKU.

Me vietämme häitä ja kuherruskesää.

Talvi oli ollut pitkä ja vaikea. Jokainen päivä yhtämittaista

nälkävyön kiristämistä. Saattoi sanoa, että minä olin nälkätaiteilijana
saavuttanut sellaisen taituruuden, että olisin huoleti voinut kilpailla
maailmanmestaruudesta siinä urheilussa.

Vaan nyt oli kevät tullut. Koko Helsinki pyrki ulkoilmaan

ummehtuneista kosteista kellarikerroksista tai ahtaista
ullakkokamareista. Lapset löivät leikkiä pihoilla ja puistoissa,
esplanaadi vilisi kävelijöitä, uudet keväthatut olivat päivän polttavin
kysymys naisten piireissä.

Katri ja minä päätimme tehdä pienen kävelymatkan — ensi kerran

kihlauksemme jälkeen.

Valmistuspuuhissa sattui pieni "kohtaus". Elköön tämä

säikähdyttäkö lukijaa. Kihlatuilla on lupa kinastella keskenään,
vaikkei heillä vielä ole oikeutta panna toimeen perhenäytelmää,
jossa silitysraudat ja paistinpannut esittävät tärkeintä osaa.
 Riitakapulana oli luonnollisesti hattu. Sanottakoon kuitenkin heti,
että Katrin hattu oli uusi, vallan viimeistä muotia. Mutta tuskin saattoi
antaa sitä tunnustusta minun pääkappaleestani. Kun aioin panna
sen paikoilleen, sanoi Katri loukatun näköisenä:

"Vai niin, sinä siis yhä otat tuon ijänikuisen, kuluneen

hattureuhkan!"

Minä torjuin hattuani kohdanneen solvauksen, — sanoin, ettei se

ikäloppu ollut, — kahdeksas kesä käytännössä. Mitä taas
kulumiseen tuli, pysyi se vielä joltisestikin koossa, joskin oli
myönnettävä, että parista halkeamasta pisti hiustöyhtö esiin. Mutta
se oli välttämätöntä ilmanvaihdon vuoksi, selitin minä.

Mutta Katri torui:

"Niin olet kuin mikäkin italialainen posetiivinsoittaja."

Siihen minä vastasin, että musiikkimieshän minä olinkin, ja mitä

posetiivin soittoon tuli, olin minä sennimisestä laatikosta ensi kerran
kuullut m.m. Verdin aarian "La donna é mobile", joka niin liikuttavasti
ylistää naisen huikentelevaisuutta. Mutta siitäkös Katri suuttui; sanoi,
että jos minä aloin naisten heikkouksia morkata, oli hänen pakko
vetää esiin miesten koko syntirekisteri, ja se paisuisi kutakuinkin
pitkäksi. Minä rukoilin häntä säästämään sen toiseen tilaisuuteen,
johon hän armollisesti suostuikin. Mutta pihalle tultua hän vielä
sanoi:

"En minä kehtaa sinun kanssasi kävellä, ellet hanki oikeata hattua.
Sulhasmiehen pitää olla moitteettomasti puettu."
 Estääkseni enempien vihollisuuksien puhkeamisen lupasin ostaa
uuden pääkappaleen — niin pian kuin saan rahoja. Viimeiset sanani
olivat strateeginen liike, jonka tarkoitus oli turvata avoin
peräytymistie.

Kadulla tarttui Katri niin lujaa käsivarteeni kuin olisi tahtonut

sanoa: nyt en laske sinua ikänä irti.

Teimme pari kierrosta espiksellä. Tuttavat vastaan tullessaan

katsoivat pitkään ja hymyilivät. Heidän kasvoillaan saattoi lukea: se,
joka on kihloissa, ei vielä ole naimisissa, ja kihlauksen purkaminen
käy paljoa nopeammin kuin sen solmiminen. Me annoimme ihmisten
päätellä, mitä päättelivät, ja jatkoimme matkaa.

Samassa huomasin ihmisvirrassa tutut naisen kasvot. Kuiskasin

Katrin korvaan:

"Pidä nyt lujasti kiinni minusta! Tuossa tulee rouva Sutinen."

Katri painautui tiukasti kylkeeni. Liukaskielinen rouva tuijotti meihin

kaukaa hyvin tarkkaan ja hämmästyneen näköisenä, mutta lähemmä
tultua ei hän ollut näkevinäänkään. Nostin parjattua hattuani ja
pakoitin hänet tervehtimään. Varmastikin hän luki ansiokseen, että
minä olin ottanut ensimäisen vakavan askeleen avioliiton satamaa
kohti. Luulen näet huomanneeni, että naiset kernaasti välittävät
avioliittoja muille niin pian kuin ovat saaneet omat hommansa siinä
suhteessa vakavaraiselle kannalle.

Katri ehdotti, että menisimme puistoon, missä lapset löivät palloa

tai askartelivat hiekkakasassa pikku lapioineen. Hän ei väsynyt
katselemaan pienokaisten puuhia, vaikka minun korviani särki
heidän melunsa ja kirkumisensa. Katri sanoi, että sellaiseen oli aika
tottua, — mitä lieneekään se veitikka tarkoittanut.

Huomaamattamme oli läheiseltä penkiltä noussut

vanhanpuoleinen herrasmies. Vaikka kevätaurinko paistoi
lämpimästi, oli miehellä turkinkaulus korvilla, karvalakki päässä ja
kalossit jalassa — vieläpä sateensuojakin kainalossa.

"No, kah, setä!" huudahdin. Samuli-sedäksi minä näet tunsin

tulijan.

Ukko siristeli silmiänsä ja tirkisti meihin molempiin — enemmän

kuitenkin Katriin.

"Niin, minähän se olen. Etkö enää tunne setääsi? Ja tämäkö se on

sinun uusi hempukkasi?"

Katri nyrpisti nenäänsä, varmaankin laatusanalle.

"Saanko luvan: morsiameni neiti Valkama — setäni", esittelin

minä.

Katri niiasi kuin koulutyttö. Setä oli juuri ojentamaisillaan kätensä

tervehtiäkseen, mutta tarttuikin äkkiä sääreensä ja sanoi:

"Ai saakeli, kun kolottaa koipeani! Reumatismi, mikäs muu.

Varmaankin olen vilustunut. Sitä kun ei aina hoksaa panna kyllin
päälleen ulos lähtiessään. — Vai niin, vai niin! Että sinulla siis taas
on uusi! No eipä ole hullumpi näköjään. Sanon sen asiantuntijana.
Naiset olivat nuorena minun erikoisalani. — Ka, mitäs siinä tollotat!
Hahhaa! Mustasukkainen! Tietysti sinä olet mustasukkainen. Mutta
enpä ihmettele, en totisesti ihmettele. Vielä sitä on minussa miestä,
vaikka olen jo alun seitsemännelläkymmenellä. Kas peeveli, kun tulin
sanoneeksi ikäni nuoren naisen kuullen! Mutta yhtä lystiä. En aio
väliinne tuppautua. Kuten sanottu: minä olen vieläkin suuri naisten
suosikki. Ellei olisi näin monta näkijää, en takaa miten kävisi."

Hän rykäisi ja sylkäisi huolimattomasti sivulleen. Vähällä piti, ettei

se lentänyt ohimenevän hienon rouvasihmisen silkkihameen
helmoihin.

"Ei maar, kylmä tässä tulee seistessä. Voi saada keuhkokuumeen.

Kesä on vielä kaukana. Hyvästi, Kalle! Käyhän talossa!"

Ja setä lähti lönkyttämään Erottajalle päin. Katri oli äärettömästi

ihastunut ukon suorapuheisuuteen, niin paljon kuin siihen
sekaantuikin karkeutta. Eikä hän heittänyt minua rauhaan ennenkuin
kerroin, mitä hän välttämättömästi tahtoi tietää sedästäni. Samuli-
setä oli vanhapoika ja varakas, mutta saituri. Kuitenkin oli hän
rahallisesti auttanut minua opintovuosina. Olin hänelle suuressa
kiitollisuuden velassa. Vieläpä minä kannoin salaista toivoa saada
kerran periä setäni — ellen sitä ennen kuolisi nälkään. Siihen sanoi
Katri purevasti, että jos setä antaisi minulle rahaa uuden hatun
ostoon, olisi hän paras kaikista sedistä auringon alla — johon
toivomukseen minä sanoin voivani kaikin puolin yhtyä.

*****

Samana keväänä tulimme me Katrin kanssa mieheksi ja vaimoksi.

Minä ehdotin siviiliavioliittoa, mutta Katri ja hänen äitinsä eivät
tyytyneet vähempään kuin kirkolliseen vihkimykseen, joka lisäksi oli
tapahtuva alttarin edessä. Miehet muka olivat kovin petollisia. Mutta
minä luulen sen johtuneen naisten halusta tehdä pikkuseikasta suuri
numero — vieläpä niinkin tavallisesta jutusta kuin naimisiin meno on.
 Varsinaisia häitä emme aikoneet viettää, koska moinen
muodollisuus oli kulunut ja vanhanaikainen. Jotkut tuttavat tulivat
kuitenkin todistamaan onneamme. Niiden joukossa soitti ensi viulua
kielevä rouva Sutinen. Samoin kamreeri Holopainen, joka oli
aikalailla nolo. Hän tunnusti menettäneensä vedon ja maksoi sen
kuittia vastaan. Katri suhtautui yhä vastenmielisesti vetoon ja väitti,
että minä menin naimisiin enemmän tuon summan kuin hänen
tähtensä. Ikäänkuin joku noin vähäisestä hyvityksestä menisi
elinkautiseksi.

Kehumatta sanoen ne olivat hauskimmat häät, joissa minä olen

ollut mukana. Vieraat vakuuttivat yhdestä suusta, etteivät he
eläissään olleet nähneet niin viehättävää morsianta kuin Katri eikä
niin nolon näköistä sulhasta kuin minä. Olin muka niinkuin mies, joka
oli tehnyt hevoskaupan ja hävinnyt. Minä kuittasin kohteliaisuuden
sanomalla, etten ollut eläissäni nähnyt vierailla niin hyvää
ruokahalua, johon kaksimieliseen kiitokseen mahtui imartelu yhtä
hyvin kuin ilkeä letkaus.

Ylimmilleen nousi ilo, kun setä Samulin rattoisa olemus ilmestyi

näyttämölle. Hän tuli pikamarssissa, asettui keskelle häähuonetta
täysissä talvitamineissa ja sanoi:

"Vai niin! Niinkö te aiotte varastaa minulta koko hääilon! Onneksi

sain vihiä asiasta — naisten kautta. Hehheh! Sellaista se on, kun on
hyvissä väleissä neitosten kanssa."

Lausuimme sedän tuhannesti tervetulleeksi ja pyysimme häntä

riisuutumaan. Ukko kyseli tarkkaan, oliko huoneessa mahdollisesti
vetoa. Vasta sitte hän uskalsi ottaa turkit yltään.
 Me saimme sen jälkeen kuulla perinpohjaisen, monilla esimerkeillä
höystetyn esitelmän kaikista nykyajan sairauksista, ennen kaikkea
reumatismista, sen syistä ja parannustavoista. Vaikka aine ei
ollutkaan suoranaisessa yhteydessä juhlapäivän tekstin kanssa,
kuunneltiin luentoa suurella mielenkiinnolla hauskan esitystavan
vuoksi.

Illemmällä kutsui setä morsiusparin sivuhuoneeseen ja rökitti

meitä jumalattomasti, koska teimme sen tyhmyyden, että menimme
naimisiin, vaikka olimme köyhiä kuin kirkon rotat. Kauanko me
luulimme tulevamme toimeen paljailla suudelmilla! Sitten hän otti
shekkikirjansa, kirjoitti tuhannen markan osoituksen ja ojensi Katrille
sanoen:

"Tässä on pohjaraha omaa kotia varten, hupsut!"

Katri tuli nyt vasta hupsuksi, ilosta, ja aikoi suin päin syöksyä
sedän kaulaan, mutta minä sain onneksi hihasta kiinni.

Setä hymyili filosoofisesti, otti toisen shekin ja kirjoitti

samanmoisen summan.

"Ja tässä on teidän tulevalle perillisellenne…"

"Hyi, setä!" keskeytti Katri punehtuen hiusrajaa myöten.

Setä nauroi, jotta maha hytkyi:

"Ka, mitä siinä on punehtumista! Tietysti te saatte lapsen niinkuin

muutkin. Mutta katsokaakin, että siitä tulee tyttöpallero, kaunis ja
lihava. Jos vain menette ja hommaatte pojan, niin…