A U.S. “action plan” is needed to complement European Union efforts to integrate the region’s national capital markets into one, the chairman of the Securities Industry Association said Thursday.

Speaking to the House financial services subcommittee on domestic and international monetary policy, trade and technology, Richard Thornburgh, the chief risk officer for Credit Suisse Group, stressed the economic importance of the transatlantic capital market between the U.S. and Europe.

In 2003 U.S. companies raised more than US$171.1 billion in EU capital markets, of which US$164.3 billion was in corporate debt issues, and more than US$6.8 billion in equity, according to Thornburgh. EU-based investors are a major supplier of capital and liquidity to the U.S. market, adding US$1 trillion of U.S. securities to their holdings since 2000.

Thornburgh said that the EU capital markets are both a critical source of investment capital for U.S. companies, and vital to U.S. investors, asset managers, and pension and mutual funds seeking portfolio diversification. He called for the creation of a U.S. action plan to complement one under way to integrate European markets. Earlier this month, the SEC and the Committee of European Securities Regulators said they have launched a formal dialogue.

“The securities industry believes that the U.S.-EU Financial Markets Regulatory Dialogue can be a starting point as well as an integral tool for promoting the best interests of the U.S. and the EU economies and capital markets,” said Thornburgh. “With this dialogue in place, we believe it can be complemented with a coordinated U.S. inter-agency action plan that can work with individual EU member-states and Brussels to achieve an integrated, deep, transparent, and liquid European capital market.”