As others did, Valérie Urbain learned about the shocking proposal by reading the news. The director general of Euroclear, the European securities depository holding some €200 billion in frozen Russian assets since the invasion of Ukraine, had not been informed by Friedrich Merz. So it was early on September 25, while checking her phone, she saw the front page of the Financial Times: The German chancellor had a plan to create a measure to lend €140 billion to Ukraine using the frozen Russian assets, but without confiscating them. The proposal has since been at the center of intense discussions that European Union heads of state and government are set to decide at the next European Council summit, on December 18 and 19.

While Urbain was not alerted, she still holds the keys to these assets. She heads Euroclear, an institution that is little-known but essential to the financial system. This depository is where central banks and major international investment funds deposit their securities (stocks, bonds, financial products). Euroclear manages €42.5 trillion in deposits – 14 times the size of France’s gross domestic product. Yet at its headquarters in the center of Brussels, there is no sign of a vault. Everything is dematerialized, with data hosted in multiple data centers around the world.

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