Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, has signalled a clear preference for boosting the eurozone economy by pumping emergency liquidity into banks instead of unveiling special “quantitative easing” measures that bypass the sector.

The greater role played by banks, rather than capital markets, in the eurozone compared with the UK and US “has important explanatory power” when it came to interpreting the ECB’s actions, Mr Trichet said in a speech in Paris late on Tuesday.